Page 62 - IFAFA ebook v4

28.

Maedhbh Cronin

Maedhbh Cronin (Spouse of Aidan Cronin, Mother of Caoimhe and

Cadhla)

I have been travelling with my husband and family for 21 years. At

this stage it feels normal to pack up every 3 or 4 years and either

head to a new adventure abroad or return home to family and a

normal working life.

In the last 21 years I have been on four postings and am currently

on my fifth, in Abu Dhabi, where my husband is Ambassador and is

also accredited to Qatar, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

I am a civil servant and, over the course of these postings, I have

taken 12 and a half years special leave without pay, which has

impacted significantly on my pension and career progression in the

Irish Civil Service. I am fortunate that I have found some form of

gainful employment in each of our postings.

Our first posting was to Beijing in 1998, where I was employed as

Personnel Officer in the British Embassy. This involved dealing

with the recruitment, retention and training of 160 locally engaged

staff.

We returned to Ireland for one and a half years and then headed to

Tehran where I did some project work for the then Labour

Relations Commission, where I had been working as an Advisory

Officer prior to being posted. Tehran was also where I gave birth to

our first child, Caoimhe. Having a child abroad in a strange country

where my language skills were limited was certainly a challenge,

but it was good preparation for our lives as a family continually

travelling and needing to manage as a unit.

We travelled from Tehran to Canberra, where I worked as a HR

Consultant, mainly providing services to the Australian Local and

Federal Government. Canberra is also where our second child,

Cadhla, was born.

We returned home, where I primarily worked as a Conciliation

Officer in the Labour Relations Commission. Nine months before we

were posted to Chicago, I was promoted and joined the core body of

my parent Department, now the Department of Business, Enterprise

and Innovation.

Chicago was a busy posting, given Aidan’s role as Consul General

there. It was also the first time our children moved schools and left

family and friends behind. For me, this is the most stressful part of

moving, worrying about whether your children will settle and what

impact the move will have on them. We have been very fortunate so

53 far, as our children have adjusted wonderfully to both travelling

abroad and returning to Ireland.