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26.

Cliodhna Noonan

I have always looked to the sky to find my path in life. I have always

travelled. I grew up in Cork but to parents from Dublin. We spent all our

school and summer holidays travelling back and forth. It prepared me for

a life as a diplomatic spouse. Home is where we are together as a family,
but I can say that we have always felt that we are Irish and that our roots

are in Ireland. We have introduced six languages to our children by this

stage in their lives (they are teenagers) and that has served only to enrich

their view of the world. On our postings we have encountered revolution,

accession to the EU, Presidential visits, ministerial visits, and we have

embraced each situation as unique in our history as a family.

We have travelled with our three children since 2004. I gave birth in

Romania. It was an amazing experience. I simply couldn’t find a reason to
be apart from my husband and other children at the time so I chose not to

return to Ireland. We have encountered fantastic international schools

and not so good international schools. In some cultures, they are the top

schools in the country – but in our experience it was always worth

believing in a model of education that we wanted for our children and not

following what everyone else was doing in that particular country. We

have watched our children find non-verbal communication with friends in

preschool to becoming fluent in a third language in order to study in a

state high school to complete the IB. It is of course a journey that
requires the family to be a unit and in our case we have been on cross

postings when the children were small and so we have missed family

milestones in the wider sense – however, the wealth of experience gained

by the postings abroad has stood to our children as the return to teen life

in Ireland.

I could write a book about the healthcare situations we have experienced.

Most were fantastic but my advice again is to keep your head on your own

shoulders and never buy into a myth that one clinic is the best because
they speak English. In our experience, the local clinics were far better.

I always believed that my role was to support my spouse to feel content

with the joint decision to be abroad for a number of years. I never

actually asked what the expectations were of a wife on a diplomatic

posting. I had freedom to develop many interesting and challenging

projects for arts in the early years in all of the countries where my

husband was a diplomatic officer and this has helped me to develop a

career in Ireland today.

The biggest challenge I came across was the huge number of fabulously

intelligent and educated women who were quite frankly bored in their

roles. I avoided the situations that I could see might lead to false

friendships or abuses of fictional power. My advice today for anyone

accompanying a diplomat on a posting is to keep your mind open, embrace

the opportunity for your own development and keep in touch with

national day events where you can meet colleagues, cultural attachés and

other dignitaries who may assist in projects at a later date.

I was never a cook. As the legislation changed, this actually helped me to

feel less like I was missing a qualification. When the vouched system of

catering for events was implemented, it took the pressure off me

completely. I felt, in my own way, like an equal at every hosted event we

organised over the years.

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