Katharine Bulbulia

Katharine Bulbulia
Senator
In office 8 October 1981 – 1 November 1989
Constituency	Administrative Panel
Personal details
Born	Katharine O'Carroll 1943 (age 80–81) County Waterford,Ireland
Political party	Fine Gael Progressive Democrats
Spouse	Abdul Bulbulia
Children	3
Education	Sacred Heart of Mary convent, Waterford
Alma mater	Dublin Institute of Technology University College Dublin

Katharine Bulbulia(néeO'Carroll;born 1943)is a former politician fromCounty WaterfordinIreland.She was aFine Gaelsenatorfrom 1981 to 1989, and subsequently joined theProgressive Democrats(PDs), serving from 1997 to 2006 as a senior aide to the party's leader.

She is a former director of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, a government-sponsored body planning and co-ordinating body established to formulate and implement a strategy to address the issue of crisis pregnancy in Ireland.She was also a member of theAWEPAGoverning Council.

Early life and family

Katharine O'Carroll was born in Dublin, but relocated to Waterford at a young age where she was educated at the Sacred Heart of Mary convent, before taking a diploma in household management at St. Mary's College inCathal Brugha Street,Dublin (now the College of Catering of theDublin Institute of Technology). She subsequently graduated fromUniversity College Dublinwith aBachelor of Artsdegree and a Higher Diploma in Education, before working as a teacher.

She is married to Abdul Bulbulia, ageneral practitionerin Waterford.They have one daughter and two sons.

Political career

A founder member of the Waterford branch of the Women's Political Association,Bulbulia joinedFine Gaelin the late 1970s, when the party's leaderGarret FitzGeraldwas encouraging more women to join. She stood as a Fine Gael candidate forTramorein the1979 local elections,where she topped the poll and became the first woman ever elected toWaterford County Council.She was later elected as well toWaterford City Council,and served from 1979 as a member of theSouth-Eastern Health Board.On the Health Board, she fought to overturn the blocking by local officials of the distribution of a book calledThe Book of the Child,published by Ireland's Health Education Bureau, because it included a page about contraception.

Bulbulia then stood unsuccessfully as a Fine Gael candidate for theWaterford constituencyat three general elections:1981,November 1982,and1989.After her 1981 defeat, she was elected to the15th Seanad Éireannon theAdministrative Panel,and re-elected three times until her defeat at the 1989 election to the19th Seanad.

Martin Cullenthe Progressive Democrats TD for Waterford, defected toFianna Fáilafter the a dispute over candidate selection for the1994 European Parliament election,and Bulbulia then joined the PDs. She stood as the PD candidate in Waterford at the1997 general election,but again failed to win a seat.However, theRainbow coalitiongovernment was defeated in the election, and anew coalition governmentwas formed betweenFianna Fáiland the Progressive Democrats. Bulbulia was appointed as programme manager to theTánaiste,PD leaderMary Harney,a post she held for nine years until Harney was replaced as leader in September 2006 byMichael McDowell.The job, which carried at the end a salary of €140,000 a year, involved daily liaison with the Taoiseach's programme manager, Gerry Hickey. That working relationship formed the main channel of communication between the two parties in the coalition. Bulbulia also played an important role in communicating with other members of the PD parliamentary party about the decisions taken at Government level.

Harney stayed on asMinister for Healthafter resigning the party leadership, and in November 2006 she appointed Bulbulia as chair of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency.The previous week, her husband Abdul had been appointed to a new Government technical advisory group on HIV/AIDS and other global communicable diseases.He had previously been appointed byBrian Cowen(Harney's predecessor as Minister for Health) as a member of theMedical Council of Ireland,where he initiated moves which led in 2001 to a softening of the Council's guidelines on abortion.

Her appointment was criticised by theanti-abortionFamily and Lifegroup, who condemned Bulbulia for having opposed the 1983Anti-abortion amendmentto theConstitution of Ireland.The following year the agency came into conflict with the Catholic pregnancy counselling agencyCURA,when it refused to renewCURA's €654,000 contract to provide advice to pregnant women. In 2005,CURAhad stopped distributing the Agency'sPositive Optionsleaflet after Bishops objected to its inclusion of information on abortion, in breach of its contract with the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, and in May 2007 Bulbulia said that it was up to CURA to look at the agency's terms and conditions to see if they could abide by them.The contract was not renewed, and in October 2007 the Irish episcopal conference instructed its chief negotiator, BishopJohn Fleming,not to sign a new contract with the Crisis Pregnancy Agency unless the church's "absolute" opposition to abortion was respected.