Tributes paid to ‘fearless campaigner’ Monica Barnes in Dáil

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has led tributes in the Dáil to former Fine Gael TD Monica Barnes who died last week aged (82) and whose funeral took place on Tuesday.

Mr Varadkar said that at a time “when it was easier to stay silent she always spoke her mind and was a fearless campaigner for change”.

Ms Barnes served as a Fine Gael Senator briefly in 1982 before winning a Dáil seat in a second election that year. She lost her seat in 1992 and regained it five years later before retiring from the Dáil in 2002.

Mr Varadkar said “I think an Irish Times profile once captured her best with a headline that tread ‘Monica Barnes: Propelled by Principle’ and Monica’s principles propelled this country to a better place.”

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Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin described Ms Barnes as “courageous, outspoken, kind and considerate and she was a progressive voice at times when that wasn’t always welcome”.

She was a “very warm person, very sociable and easily crossed the partisan political divide”

He said she is an enormous loss to Irish politics and “one of the outstanding members of this House down through the generations”.

Mr Martin said “we hope her family will draw some consolation her rich legacy with which she has left the political world”.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said she wanted “to say this in the right way - she didn’t really come across like a Fine Gaeler, at least not to me.

“And I mean that as the highest compliment to her. She was a committed feminist,” and in every respect “a woman’s woman”.

Ms McDonald described Ms Barnes as a very brave woman and recalled, with the advent of the referendum on abortion that “she was one of very few who actually stood against that at the time; one of very few who had the foresight and the compassion and vision for women to actually take at that time what was a very courageous stance”.

Labour leader Brendan Howlin described Ms Barnes as a “champion of women’s rights” and a title “she absolutely earned by her deeds”.

He pointed out that she was “on the social democratic wing of Fine Gael” at a time when that was a important force and he recalled “how strong Monica was” in her opposition to the Eighth Amendment in the 1983 referendum.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath said Ms Barnes had a very vibrant and a “very distinguished career. I would thank her for her service.”

Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy said she only met Ms Barnes on a few occasions but “like Deputy McDonald, it was very difficult to make sense of Fine Gael in the early 1980s when you’d have a group of very progressive women and at the same time some very conservative men”.

Ms Murphy said “the one thing I always felt was that warmth about her but also her forthrightness.

“Particularly at this referendum campaign, had she been well and able I know she would have been involved in this campaign because I don’t think politics is something that would have left her.”