Mary McAleese - Post Presidency

Post Presidency

Mary McAleese along with her husband Martin were announced as winner of the Tipperary Peace Prize in January 2012. In May 2012, the Irish Times reported that she had voluntarily returned more than €500,000 in unused Presidential Allowance funds, accrued over the 14 years of her term of office. She is currently pursuing a Licentiate of Canon Law (JCL) at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University.

In a radio interview discussing her book Quo Vadis? Collegiality in the Code of Canon Law on 28 September 2012, said she was concerned at the growing number of young men, and in particular young gay men, who take their own lives in Ireland. She said that when the research is broken down, it shows that young gay men are one of the most at-risk groups in Ireland. Mrs McAleese said many of these young men will have gone to Catholic schools and they will have heard there their church's attitude to homosexuality. "They will have heard words like disorder, they may even have heard the word evil used in relation to homosexual practice," she said. She went on to say "And when they make the discovery, and it is a discovery and not a decision, when they make the discovery, that they are gay, when they are 14, 15 or 16, an internal conflict of absolutely appalling proportions opens up". She said many young gay men are driven into a place that is "dark and bleak". McAleese said she met the Apsotolic Nuncio, Archbishop Charles John Brown, shortly after Easter to raise with him her concern about the growing number of suicides among young men in Ireland.