Taoiseach Micheal Martin has opened up about the loss of his two children, saying that the experience ‘changed’ him.
Speaking to RTE’s Brendan O’Connor on Saturday, the Taoiseach said he is “worried that death is becoming a metric” and said he had noticed a difference in “how many deaths we can tolerate”,
Mr Martin said he is not comfortable with how people have become desensitised to the figures and said his first priority is preventing people from getting seriously ill and dying from Covid-19.
He said the death of his children showed him the impact the loss of a loved one can have and so said preventing the deaths of others is top of the list when it comes to fighting the pandemic.
The Taoiseach and his wife Mary lost their son Ruairi after he tragically passed away in 1999 at just five weeks old from a cot death, and their daughter Leana died unexpectedly when she was seven years old.
Talking about his children, Mr Marin said: “We all have personal experiences in life. It does give me a sense, I think, of the finality of when death occurs in a family, the devastation that occurs to a family.
“When Ruairí died, Ruairí died from a cot death. I think you have a lot of anxiety after that,” Mr Martin said
“Your certainties are removed in life. You are full of optimism as a young person. Something like that hits you, and life is no longer full of those certainties. It makes you a more anxious parent. It makes you, you have to try and deal with that, you live with that, you know.
“Yeah, I think it has changed me.”
He went on to say that the loss reinforced his faith in family as he leaned on others for support.
He said: “When Léana died, the people and family were fantastic. People around us were fantastic, and they got us through what was a terrible trauma in the loss of Léana and Ruairí”.
“I never really talked about it because you always kept it private to protect everybody, and I think there is an importance around that too, and the dignity of death and our lost ones as well are entitled to that too,” he said.
Mr Martin said letters the family received after the deaths made it clear that others around him were also suffering from the loss of their loved ones.
He said: “They came in from people who lost children and so on, and they resonated.
“There are a lot of people out there who have had terrible trauma in their lives. The important thing is family and community and the need to get out there, engage again. You have to get up again, and you do have to just get out again.”
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