Ireland’s Future: “I believe Irish Unity is inevitable.” An interview with Pat Cullen, MP
- iIrish Admin
- November 8, 2024
- Edited 2 weeks ago
Table of Contents
Pat Cullen was elected as MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone in July 2024. She is the youngest of seven children and grew up in Co Tyrone. She is married with two children, and recently became a grandmother. Pat holds a degree in Nursing and a Master’s in management and qualified as a registered nurse in 1985 working in a range of community and clinical healthcare settings, before becoming a director of nursing. She has held senior roles within nursing, including Director of Nursing at the Public Health Agency and advisor to the Department of Health, before joining the Royal College of Nursing in 2016 and became the director of the College in NI in 2019. Pat is an honorary professor of Queen’s University.
What is your earliest political memory?
My earliest political memory is the time of the blanket protest and then the no-wash protest. Whilst I was very young, I remember this so well. Every night, our mother brought us together for the rosary and she offered the first decade for the men on the blanket and the women in Armagh. The second decade was ‘to banish’ the British army from our shores and to keep us safe from their hands. I remember her very words and the significance of her prayers. I also knew the families around our townland and throughout Carrickmore that were suffering as a result of British rule and the impact it was having. I also remember the impact of our home being constantly searched and destroyed for no reason and the unjustness of this invasion of our rights and privacy.
What is the biggest change you have seen in your lifetime?
The biggest change, without question was the announcement of the Good Friday Agreement. I will never forget the 10 April 1998. My husband and I had taken the children away for the weekend to Ennis. It was my husband’s birthday. The children were eight and three and they kept wanting us to build a snowman with them as it had snowed the previous night. They kept asking why we were watching the TV and crying. We knew their lives were going to be so different to ours. Both of us worked in the health service and seen first hand the impact of the conflict on everyone we treated and just knowing that change was ahead of us was unfathomable. I will never forget that day.
