Clodagh Finn: Ireland of 1986 felt like an unforgiving, inflexible place for a young female student

Women faced huge social and cultural challenges in Ireland in 1986, particularly when it came to marriage breakdown, single motherhood, and societal attitudes

Polling Day in Ballymun for the dicorce referendum. The resounding no vote left those suffering marital breakdown, estimated at about 80,000, in 'the most horrific hiatus.' File picture:

When I think of 1986, the memory that pops to the surface is the burning tang of the three-bar electric heater and the circle of heat it threw out into my Dublin 6 bedsit. I can also vividly recall the shock of inhospitable cold that smacked you hard if you happened to put a toe outside that cosy, artificial sphere.

It was like that in the outside world too.