With Irish Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald facing a vote of no-confidence, we take a look at her husband, renowned psychiatrist Professor Michael Fitzgerald. In an interview with RTE, Fianna Fail spokesman Jim O'Callaghan said that Frances Fitzgerald "should go." It had recently emerged that the former Minister for Justice knew about alleged attempts to discredit police whistleblower Maurice McCabe. Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald told RTE that Fitzgerald, "had clearly failed in her duties" and that Fitzgerald "was so utterly malicious and designed to... ruin Sgt. McCabe's life."


The couple has 3 sons, one is an actor, one is an accountant and another is still in college

According to the Irish Times, Frances and Michael Fitzgerald have three sons together. While a TheJournal.ie feature said that one of their sons is an actor, one is a trainee accountant and another is a student.

Their children are named Owen, Mark and Robert. Fitzgerald told the Irish Times in 2014 that Owen was born in London. She also said that before having Mark and Robert, she had two miscarriages.

The couple now lives in the leafy Dublin suburb of Castleknock.

Read More: Whistleblower scandal may bring down Ireland’s Deputy Leader Frances FitzGerald


Professor Fitzgerald diagnosed an accused drug kingpin with Asperger's in 2014

Fitzgerald met her husband while she worked as a social worker at St. James' Hospital, according to the Times. That same feature says that Professor Michael Fitzgerald is the Adjunct Professor of Child Psychiatry at Trinity University with an "expertise in child and adolescent psychiatry." Professor Fitzgerald is also considered an expert in Asperger's.

Fitzgerald said in a speech at her alma-mater, the London School of Economics in October 2016 that she and her husband share a "lifelong interest in mental health."

In March 2017, it emerged that Professor Fitzgerald had diagnosed accused Silk Road drug kingpin Gary Davis with Asperger's in 2014, reports the London Times. Silk Road was a website that dealt drugs. Davis, who lived in Co. Wicklow, tried to use his Asperger's diagnosis to avoid extradition to the U.S. In June 2017, Davis was extradited to a prison in New York State.

Read More: Irish Deputy Prime Minister could be forced to resign over email scandal


Professor Fitzgerald believes that Hitler, George Orwell & Lewis Carroll could all have been autistic

Professor Fitzgerald claimed in 2004's Autism and Creativity: Is There a Link Between Autism in Men and Exceptional Creativity and in 2005's The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger's Syndrome and the Arts that Lewis Carroll, WB Yeats, Eamon De Valera, George Orwell, Adolf Hitler and Hans Christian Anderson could all have been autistic.

On his personal website, Professor Fitzgerald, says that he was the first Professor of Child Psychiatry in Ireland in 1996. He has studied at St. Patrick's Hospital in Dublin, Chicago Medical School, and the Maudsley Hospital and the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London. While he has performed research at Mount Sinai in New York City, the Institute of Psychiatry in London as well as the University of Manchester. He has written 25 books on child psychiatry, autism and Asperger's.

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