INTERVIEW:THERE IS NO PINNING Liz O'Donnell down on where her future lies. We have been sinking into the feather cushions of a hotel sofa for almost an hour and the question keeps getting batted back politely, like a dustball with a table tennis paddle, writes Catherine Cleary.
The woman who used to be Leinster House's most glamorous deputy says she is keeping her options open. But it might be a career in television. On Thursday night viewers can watch O'Donnell walking the world's poorest streets in a T-shirt and khakis presenting RTÉ's Far Away Up Close.
Although she won't be specific on future plans, she is happy to answer other questions of the moment. She would like to see Bertie Ahern join a group of elder statespeople who negotiate around international conflicts. She wishes Irish teenagers could be taught learn to appreciate their lot via a mandatory stint in an African country. She would rather not see unelected senators such as Ciaran Cannon or Fiona O'Malley lead the PDs into the future. When she gets time she might write a memoir about the peace process. And she won't ever walk through the doors of Leinster House as a politician again or do interviews about where she buys her clothes or her favourite lipstick.
O'Donnell stepped into a surreal afterworld when her 15-year political career died on the dingy trestle tables of an election count centre last year. On the night of the count, her party colleague Michael McDowell might have garnered more attention with his dramatic "I love Ireland" speech, but for O'Donnell a longer career as a public representative was just as resoundingly over.
In the sodden summer that followed, a hopeful member of a production team pencilled her in for Celebrities Go Wild. Would she pull on a fleece and go to Connemara with Michelle de Bruin and model Katy French they asked? It is easy to imagine the production team's discussion. "Liz O'Donnell roughing it? Reality TV gold." "No thanks," was her instant response. She still laughs at the idea. "Can you imagine me? I thought these people must be crazy. I'm not the outdoors type."
Then Adrian Lynch from Animo Productions phoned and asked her to present a short series of programmes about Irish aid in Africa. It would be a different kind of reality. "It was the only project that immediately appealed. I knew I could do it and it would be a kind of natural continuum of my work in politics."
When the call came she was still on her knees, she says. "I didn't know what I was doing, recovering from the shock of the election outcome, just the election itself was a tough election for the party and for me."
How did it feel to lose her seat? "I wasn't prepared for it. Nobody really ever is. You run an election in the hope that you will do well. But it is a very public humiliation. It's a rejection and for all of those human reasons, it's upsetting. But I found I very quickly shook myself down and started to see positive aspects. There are always opportunities in change."
She switched off the radio and spent time with family and friends. Her mother became seriously ill soon afterwards and she watched the formation of the Dáil on a distant television screen in the stroke ward of St Camillus's Hospital in Limerick. It was, she says, a weird "out-of-body experience" to be so removed from the seat of power which was once the centre of her world. She did not want the consolation prize of a seat in the Seanad and it is here that she takes issue with the idea of either PD leadership candidate Ciaran Cannon or Fiona O'Malley leading the party into the future.
"I myself would prefer to see Mary [ Harney] holding onto the leadership," she says carefully. "I just think it's a more natural position for her to hold because she's in the Cabinet. To be a leader of a political party in Government and not to have an electoral mandate will be quite difficult. But Mary has made it clear she doesn't want to continue and, in fairness to her, it's not her fault how things have turned out. But it's most unfortunate. "
Back in the days before the decimation of her party, O'Donnell had first visited Africa as a junior Minister in the Department of Foreign Affairs. She found it "life-altering" to see the "scale of unmet need" in the African countries receiving Irish aid.
"You are protected and chaperoned and whizzed around in government cars. So going back this time was a very different experience. There were only four of us - the director, myself the cameraman and the soundman." In the first programme she visits Liberia and re-interviews James, a former boy soldier who had talked on camera four years earlier. Footage from the earlier interview shows him full of bravado and bluster talking about killing and his role as a commander in the chillingly-named SBU or Small Boy Unit. In his interview with O'Donnell he has become a monosyllabic teenager, wearing his scars much more visibly.
O'Donnell also interviews Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and was impressed by the Harvard-educated grandmother who is leading the country. "She's the great white hope. She's the great black hope. She really is. If you were to paint a picture portrait of the ideal president for a country on its knees it would be her."
How was it interviewing a politician? "It was very strange because my only experience of broadcasting is of being on the other side of the microphone. So I had to force myself to ask short questions."
In Kenya she was struck by the capacity for happiness among children living in dire poverty. "I think it's very important that our own young people watch these programmes and are informed about the poverty and need in the world. Because our kids take everything for granted, they don't know how lucky they are. With the falling away of interest in institutional religions, I think it could become a new secular religion for our youngsters, engaging with that. I'd like to see them going over and working on projects with Concern and other volunteer services and take over the legacy of the Irish footprint in Africa."
Kenya and South Africa are dealt with in later programmes and the final instalment sees her talking to Bono, an old contact and sounding board from her days in the Northern Ireland peace negotiations.
"Bono's very much a global player. His engagement with aid is much more deeply entrenched and much more researched than a lot of people would expect. A lot of people think that he's just another celebrity. In fact he has founded an organisation that has 150 people working for it in all the G8 countries."
Back to domestic politics.
O'Donnell's round of pre-TV publicity interview comes at the end of Bertie's big week. How did she view it all unfolding?
"I was glued to the television and I was very sad for him because I personally have very good relations with him, obviously on the peace process but also across government. Particularly, he was always very supportive on the aid budget and backed me up when I had rows with Charlie McCreevey on the aid budget.
"I think there was an inevitability. The political and personal strain I think he was under for the last few years, I don't think was sustainable.
Having said that, I think my lawyer's head tells me nothing has been proven about the man and I think people should suspend judgment. In terms of evidence, he hasn't actually been found guilty of any corrupt acts."
As someone who sat across from him and alongside him at the negotiating table, what was his secret?
"He's very self-effacing. He diffuses people's fixed position. He's very easy and he himself never takes a fixed position which means that there's wriggle room for others. It's actually difficult to have a row with him. At times you would go in to have a barney about something and he'd say: 'Ah I agree with you Liz. We'll try and do something about that.' And suddenly you're diffused and you haven't had the row."
She hopes he will find "something meaningful" to do in the future. "Politics is not like a job - it's your whole life. It's what you are. You are a representative voice for thousands of people who vote for you. I would like to see him use his skills in some kind of conflict resolution role. There is a group of international leaders . . . Bill Clinton is one . . . Nelson Mandela . . . Mary Robinson . . . it's a kind of a group of elders, and they help in a very quiet way in mediation. I think there would be a role if he was motivated for that."
Did she ever tire of being seen as the glamour-puss of Dáil Éireann, always seeming to have the prefix "the lovely" attached to her name? "I think I would always look the same no matter what job I was doing. If I was a barrister, I would still be dressing the way I dress. I think it's important when you're in public life or if you're representing your country that you do your best, put on your best bib and tucker. But I never went down that road of doing those interviews about where I buy my clothes or what's my favourite lipstick and I think women politicians really have to guard against that, the diminishing of their standing as TDs. With that lightweight stuff you can be very quickly ushered into a place where you're not taken very seriously."
After an appearance on Questions and Answers, she would regularly get the type of queries that John Bowman and Brian Cowen have probably never had to field. "I used to get e-mails into my office asking: 'Where did you get the necklace you were wearing?' Can you imagine? I'd say: 'Did that woman hear anything I said?'"
Her role in negotiations on the Good Friday Agreement is her proudest achievement and she has not ruled out a political memoir. "I really enjoyed working with Mo Mowlam. I miss her. Yes, I would consider a book. I like writing. I just haven't had the time. I remember Nell McCafferty ringing me up saying: 'I hope you're keeping a diary', but I hadn't time to leave the conditioner in my hair let alone keep a diary." The negotiations were so intense that they lost track of "hours, the days and times of days", but some images stand out in her memory. "I would have loved to have a camera in those days to capture Mo with her shoes off wandering around demented. Just the human aspects of it, rather than the photograph outside Stormont when it was all done. They should do that, just in terms of history, capture those moments of fatigue and human interest, the hallways and huddles."
For now, it is a case of waiting to see how her first step in television is received. "What I'm enjoying more than ever is the return of my status as a private citizen and not feeling responsible for every news bulletin . . . if a prisoner escapes or a misdiagnosis of cancer. There's so much of this stuff. When you're in Government you just think: 'what next?' It's great to be liberated from that. The days are much longer and you just feel there's more time.
"There are very few other professions quite as pervasive. You're never really off duty. It's undoubtedly much harder for women because most men politicians have supportive spouses and they're very much part of their campaign, their support systems. Women don't have that. Usually your career takes off the same time as your child-rearing. It's one of the conundrums of modern Ireland and it's not just female politicians."
Far Away Up Close is on RTÉ1 on Thursday April 24th at 10.45pm