Lenihan recalls "fantastic" Athlone childhood in RTE interview

The man tasked with solving the biggest financial crisis in the history of the State took time out to reminisce about his childhood in Athlone during an interview with RTE on Sunday last. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan revealed that he was a follower of Athlone Town FC and spoke with "a very heavy Athlone accent" for much of his youth. He also praised the national school education he received from the Marist Brothers in the town and recalled being taught Latin by his aunt, Deputy Mary O'Rourke, when he was aged twelve. The Minister appeared with Deputy O'Rourke for an interview with Miriam O'Callaghan on RTE Radio One's 'Miriam Meets' programme last weekend. It was his first-ever joint interview with Deputy O'Rourke. His family moved from Athlone to Dublin when he was twelve years of age but the Minister said he had wonderful memories of his time in Athlone. When asked to pick a song to play on the progamme, he selected 'I Hear You Calling Me' by John McCormack. "I picked the song by John McCormack because of the Athlone connection. I spent my first twelve years in the town and I've a fantastic memory of that," he said. "I often think people look at me as a bourgeois Dubliner, a barrister, and all of that is in me of course.... but when I moved to Dublin at twelve everyone called me a culchie and I had a very heavy Athlone accent. "I used to always refer to lorries as 'lurries' throughout my teenage years, which is a very midland accent, and I just have so many happy memories of my early childhood. I used to sing at mass in Latin in the 1960s, but apart from that I played soccer. Athlone was a great soccer town and in those years the division between the town and the country was very strong. "I was a soccer fanatic and I'd catch excursion trains to see Leinster Senior League games in Tolka Park or Dalymount. I loved following Athlone Town as a team and I kept that up in my teenage years. Generally living or growing up in a mid-sized town is an experience that has really passed away because now I think most people in the towns live outside the town in a bungalow or surrounded by the country. Back then, there was a very sharp distinction between town and country." Another change he noted involved the "intense religiosity" of his youth in Athlone. "In a town like Athlone in the 1960s the religious atmosphere was very, very intense. There were so many priests, so many nuns, so much emphasis on the religious experience... I think people express their faith in a more personal way nowadays." Not all of his childhood memories were happy ones, and the Minister became emotional when speaking about the death of his five-year-old brother from leukaemia when he was aged six. Discussing this, Deputy O'Rourke added: "He passed away the day my son was born. So God took and God gave." Though the Minister's national school education was with Athlone's Marist Brothers, he quipped: "I'm not sure they're going to be claiming me after the budget this year." He added: "They were very good Brothers, actually. There's very few of them left now, of course. I don't think they've got into any serious problem other than maybe a bit of an excessive use of the cane occasionally." The Minister also talked about what it was like to grow up as the son of a prominent politician, Brian Lenihan Snr. "In Athlone we lived in a house outside the town, not too far outside town, and there were traffic jams outside the town on Saturday as people queued up to see my father," he said. "People stayed in bedrooms and in all the rooms of the house to queue up to see him in his office. So it was a very intense upbringing for a child of a political household." Discussing the evolution of his relationship with Deputy O'Rourke, he said: "For my first fifteen years, Mary O'Rourke was Auntie Mary. She wasn't a politician or councillor she was Auntie Mary, the parent, the mother of two of my first cousins who lived in the town I grew up in before we moved to Dublin. So I knew her in that context, as a private individual and family member. My mother explained to me afterwards that she was interested in politics but that was after she went into politics." A spell learning Latin from Deputy O'Rourke was also discussed. "Mary was a very exact teacher, a very precise teacher," he said. "You didn't have much room for wandering with Mary. She stuck to the text. There were no get out of jail clauses. You had to read chapter one and come back the next day and explain what was in chapter one and what each word meant. Then she brought you, very methodically, through each chapter. I've met many of her pupils since in different parts of Ireland and they all had the same experience; a very exact teacher. Not too exacting, but quite exact." Deputy O'Rourke recalled the Finance Minister as a boy, saying: "He was a very studious, steady young fella. He also had a great bit of fun in him, and still has, but he would knuckle down to whatever I'd given him as homework or to study, and he did get a grounding in Latin from me."