Page 34 - IFAFA ebook v4

I also worked in London, Denmark and Singapore. However, my career

back home was truncated and now my pension represents only 10.5 years

of work, which means a minute pension, and many other spouses have

suffered even more with no pension contributions. I learned late in the

day that it was possible to rent our home and thus obtain pension

contributions but DFA did not help spouses, which is a pity, considering

all the unpaid work that we do. I know many spouses did not have these

employment opportunities and suffered as such even more.

I felt excited at being around for the early years of IFAFA from the year

it started with the ‘founding members’ based in the US. I became

Chairperson for a while and started the printed edition of the newsletter

with Betsy Murray doing all the advertising back in the late 80s. I felt

only then did we begin to have a voice, asking for very basic things like

getting posted in the summer so children could start school at the

beginning of the school year. It took many years to get help with school

bus transport and school fees. There was a serious belief out there that we

must not be seen to have ‘privileges’ over and above other civil servants.

There were serious misconceptions about what that help actually meant

for our children. For example, in Moscow we could not afford the bus for

our two children to go to school it took one hour each way to drive to the

American School and was a hazardous journey in the 8 months of snow.

Luckily, we had an Irish babysitter living with us who got a day job in

the school so could drive there and home. The achievements of IFAFA

were to enable conversations to take place with the Department

Management team to alert them to the lived experience of the spouses and

families of officers that, in turn, helped to promote our case at times.

There is more to do now, especially with the loss of pension rights for

spouses now retired or currently en poste and this is serious and

important work that we need to support. I so want to embark on a

campaign for spouses’ pension rights!

My husband is retired and I am now able to return to work at UCD and in

private practice. I feel great satisfaction in what we achieved in our life

together, despite some hard times. Now I know that I am at ‘home’, these

days I choose the places I go to on my terms and under my own identity.

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