First Person Sunday, November 08, 2009 Interview: Fiona Ness I established the Irish Heart Foundation in 1966. Since we began educating the public about heart disease there has been a huge drop in coronary death.
I was a controversial figure among my colleagues. Doctors don’t normally talk in public; they’re supposed to be circumspect.
I object to what Mary Harney is doing, particularly in the medical-social area - such as looking after old people and giving people proper rehabilitation.
Money won’t solve the troubles of the health service. The real problem exists within the medical profession itself. The drug industry is a far too powerful presence in hospitals. It has created a drug culture among doctors.
Another problem is private hospitals. My profession was set up to help sick people, not make money out of them.
I’ve never had an illness of any sort. I don’t go on diets. I eat everything in moderation and I gave up smoking in the late 1930s. I’m very physically active.
No matter what your genes are like, if you don’t lead the right lifestyle, you’re going to run into trouble.
My father suggested I do medicine. The first few years on medical campus were extremely boring. Once I got into the hospital and got to work with patients, it suited me very well.
My father, Richard Mulcahy, was a great man himself.
He was hugely involved in the intelligence side of the Civil War, but he never became part of our history.
My father was such a modest man. His role in the Civil War has been completely overshadowed by people, especially Michael Collins.
When Collins died my father was solely left as the person running the Civil War.
All civil wars are disastrous in a sense that there is no law and order. My father was having to protect the Dáil members and that got him into the execution business.
There was a mutiny when my father tried to demob the army. He had to bring it down from50,000 soldiers to 10,000 for a peace-time army - he became the fall guy.
During my childhood my father was a presence. He was very busy, we’d only see him once a day. But he was affectionate and totally dependent on our mother.
To go by the letters my father wrote to my mother, he was a very passionate man. He was an easy person to live with.
Politicians in my father’s day weren’t wealthy like they are now. He was paid »300 a year.
We bought nothing we didn’t need and my mother made all our clothes. We lived on cheap cuts of meat. Pig’s cheek and all the rest.
My parents’ families were split on the issue of the Civil War. They made a rule that the children were to be kept completely away from all war discussion.
The only time my father got impatient was if he heard us making a remark about the war. He’d wipe you off.
My Father The General by Risteárd Mulcahy (Liberties Press) is part of The Great Irish Book Week (www.greatirishbook week.com). An updated version of the book is available, priced €18
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