McNamara and Newman are particularly outspoken on the issue of a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. While other bishops advocate people vote with their conscience in the referendum on the issue, McNamara and Newman instruct Catholics that they have a duty to “vote yes” to the referendum.
In 1984, the Archdiocese of Dublin becomes vacant when Archbishop Ryan is given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia. Ryan is expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but dies suddenly in office before a consistory can be held. McNamara’s selection to replace the more liberal Ryan in Dublin creates media reports linking his appointment to the ongoing tensions between the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, and the liberal Fine Gael–Labour Partycoalition under Garret FitzGerald. Relations between Alibrandi and the coalition break down, with the government requesting that Alibrandi be removed because of his suspected closeness to Irish republicans in Sinn Féin and to the opposition Fianna Fáil party and in particular its leader, Charles Haughey. Critics accused Alibrandi of engineering McNamara’s appointment in the belief that the outspoken McNamara can help derail the coalition’s liberal policies on divorce and contraception.
McNamara, as expected, takes a far more outspoken stance of issues than had Ryan previously. While the coalition succeeds in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce are defeated.
McNamara’s service in Dublin is short-lived. Already suffering from what proves to be terminal cancer, he dies on April 8, 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government is defeated in the 1987 Irish general election. He is succeeded as archbishop by a university lecturer, Desmond Connell.
In the early 2000s, amid growing scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland about clerical sex abuse, it is revealed that as archbishop McNamara had sought legal advice as to the Church’s liability arising from such abuse.
Andrews comes from a family with strong political connections. His grandfather, Todd Andrews, fought in the Irish War of Independence and became a founder-member of Fianna Fáil, and his grandmother, Mary Coyle, was a member of Cumann na mBan. His father, David Andrews, served as a TD from 1965 to 2002 and is a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, while his uncle, Niall Andrews, is a former Fianna Fáil TD and MEP and his cousin, Chris Andrews (son of Niall Andrews), has been a Sinn Féin TD since 2020 (having previously served as a Fianna Fáil TD from 2007 to 2011). In April 2018, Andrews is described as “part of Fianna Fáil royalty.”
Andrews is educated at Blackrock College and attends university at University College Dublin (UCD). Before entering political life, he works as a secondary school teacher in Dublin from 1991 until 1997, working in Senior College Ballyfermot, Sutton Park School and Bruce College. While a secondary school teacher, he studies law at King’s Inns and qualifies as a barrister in 1997. He is called to the Bar in 1997 and practices as a barrister until 2003.
In June 2006, Andrews leads a group of Fianna Fáil backbenchers in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a backbench committee to influence government policy. At the 2007 Irish general election, he retains his seat in Dún Laoghaire with 8,587 votes.
Andrews is appointed Minister of State for Children in May 2008. As Minister, he frames the Government response to the Ryan Report on Institutional Abuse. This includes an Implementation Plan that delivers an additional 200 social workers for the HSE Child and Family Services. In April 2009, he introduces the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Scheme, which provides, for the first time, free universal access to pre-school education. The scheme benefits 65,000 children in 2013.
After the release of the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Dublin diocese in November 2009, Andrews, speaking at a conference in Dublin Castle, is asked about the position of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray. He says, “I think it’s everybody’s view that if adverse findings are made against an individual in a commission of inquiry, then it would be amazing that there be no consequences for them.” Bishop Murray subsequently apologises to survivors and resigns from office.
In December 2009, Andrews oversees the introduction of government policy to lower the legal age of consent to sixteen, citing a Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report which recommends the legal age be reduced to sixteen from the current seventeen. He expresses the view the existing laws are “inappropriate” and out of touch with the modern reality of sexual relations between young people and promises to publish legislation to change the age of consent to sixteen. He notes that Ireland and Malta are “the only countries in Europe with an age of consent of seventeen.” However, the law is not passed by the Oireachtas before the 2011 Irish general election in which Fianna Fáil cedes power to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.
On January 31, 2011, in the run up to the general election, Andrews is named Health spokesman by the party leader, Micheál Martin. He loses his seat at the general election.
In September 2012, Andrew is appointed Fianna Fáil Director of Elections for the Children’s referendum.
In February 2019, Andrews is selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate for the Dublin constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election. He is elected in May 2019 receiving 14.1% of the 1st preference votes, but as the fourth candidate elected, he does not take his seat until after the UK leaves the European Union on January 31, 2020.
Andrews is appointed EU Chief Observer for the 2023 Nigerian Federal and State elections by High Representative Vice President Josep Borrell. A report on the election is subsequently produced highlighting that the election was marred by a lack of transparency, public mistrust in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), violence, and vote buying, stressing the need for comprehensive electoral reforms.
Outside of his political career, Andrews is appointed chief executive of the Irish aid charity GOAL in November 2012, replacing the retiring founder, John O’Shea. In October 2016, he resigns from GOAL after it is revealed that other senior executives of GOAL have been involved in “large-scale fraud,” though there is no suggestion that he himself is involved in the scandal. In October 2017, the new CEO of GOAL announces a deficit of €31.6 million due to the fraud but says that it will survive after “one of the most challenging years” in its 40-year history.
In March 2017, Andrews is appointed as Director-General of the Irish State-supported EU think tank and advocacy body, the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), with the Chairperson of the IIEA, former Leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi Quinn, describing him as having the “political and administrative skills” of value to the IIEA.
Andrews is married and has two sons and a daughter. His brother, David McSavage, is a comedian, and he is a first cousin of former RTÉ television and radio presenter Ryan Tubridy.
A trained barrister, Pery becomes a member of the Irish House of Commons for the Wicklow constituency in 1751. On the dissolution of the house following the death of George II, he is elected for the constituency of Limerick City and serves from 1761 until 1785, becoming Speaker of the House in 1771. In 1783, he stands also for Dungannon, however chooses to sit for Limerick City. He is considered one of the most powerful politicians in Ireland in his time, leading a faction which includes his nephew, the future Earl of Limerick, and his relatives by marriage, the Hartstonges. Following his resignation, he is created Viscount Pery, of Newtown Pery, near the City of Limerick, in the Peerage of Ireland, entitling him to a seat in the Irish House of Lords. As he has no male heirs, his title becomes extinct on his death on February 24, 1806.
Pery is also noted for his part in the history of the architecture of Limerick. In 1765, he commissions the engineer Davis Ducart to design a town plan for land that he owns on the southern edge of the existing city. This leads to the construction of the Georgian area of the city later known as Newtown Pery. He is also commemorated in the naming of Pery Square.
Murray lectures in the Mater Dei Institute of Education from 1969, becoming professor of moral theology at Holy Cross College, located in Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin. He also lectures at University College Dublin from 1973 to 1982 in Catechetics and from 1978 to 1982 in Medical Ethics.
In 1981, Murray is appointed Titular Bishop of Glenndálocha and Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, making him the youngest bishop at the time, aged only 41. He is appointed as Bishop of Limerick on February 10, 1996, by Pope John Paul II. He is installed as Bishop of Limerick on March 24, 1996.
In November 2009, Murray is pressured to resign from his post after the Murphy Report finds that he had mishandled child sexual abuse allegations within his diocese.
Murray announces his resignation to a congregation, including priests of the Diocese, people working in the Diocesan Office and the Diocesan Pastoral Centre, at 11:00 a.m. (noon in Rome, the hour of the publication of the decision) in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick.
Following a local primary education, Newman attends St. Munchin’s College, Limerick. He studies for the priesthood at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and is ordained there on June 18, 1950.
In 1953 Newman is appointed Professor of Sociology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, succeeding Peter McKevitt. It is an institution he remains within, and eventually leads with distinction, until he is appointed Bishop of Limerick in May 1974. He publishes two books about the college: Maynooth and Georgian Ireland (1979) followed by Maynooth and Victorian Ireland (1983).
Newman arrives in Limerick with a strong reputation for reform having served a number of years as President of Maynooth where he adapted and shaped the college to the new challenges of the 1970s. His academic background in sociology gives him an informed understanding of the changing dynamic in Irish life, especially rural life which he has been writing about since the early 1960s, especially the dangers of depopulation.
Newman often makes comment on national matters particularly about church-state relations which has been his special area of study for over 20 years. He takes what might be called a broadly ‘conservative’ approach which, as time goes on, jars with wider public opinion especially as Ireland faces a number of constitutional referenda in the 1980s. At least one modern author has quoted the epithet alleged to have been conferred on Newman by Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Mullah of Limerick, for articulating a neo-conservative position more commonly associated with the United States.
Newman’s later years are dogged by periodic bouts of ill-health, and he dies in office on April 3, 1995, of hepatoma. He is buried in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick. He is the subject of many obituaries not least because of his extensive public statements in his years as Bishop of Limerick. The Tablet suggests he was most “well known for his conservatism and taste for controversial remarks” before quoting the homily by Cardinal Cahal Daly that “he seemed to have a strange sense of inadequacy; and, for one who was so lovable, he seemed to have difficulties in believing that others respected and admired and indeed loved him.” The Irish Times obituary says he was a man “who kept fighting the battles of long ago.”
Newman is succeeded as Bishop of Limerick by Bishop Donal Murray.
Limerick City Library holds an extensive set of newspaper articles about Bishop Jeremiah Newman which have been made available online.
Butt is called to the Irish bar in 1838 and the English bar in 1859. Intermittently from 1852 he represents, successively, one English and two Irish constituencies in the House of Commons. In 1848 he undertakes the defense of the Young Ireland leaders, who are charged with high treason for their abortive insurrection that year. From 1865 to 1869 he is the principal defense counsel for the imprisoned leaders of the Fenians (Irish Republican, or Revolutionary, Brotherhood).
Despite his legal work for the Fenians, Butt, who is basically a conservative, fears the consequences of a successful Fenian revolt. Disillusioned, however, by the British government’s failure to relieve the Irish Great Famine of the late 1840s, he becomes convinced that a native parliament is required for Irish land reform and other needs. In May 1870 he calls for an Irish Parliament subordinate to the imperial Parliament at Westminster, and later that year he forms the Home Government Association. From 1871 he quickens the Irish nationalist agitation in the House of Commons but gradually loses his leadership, partly because he disapproves of Parnell’s tactics of obstructing routine parliamentary business.
Butt amasses debts and pursues romances. It is said that at meetings he is occasionally heckled by women with whom he had fathered children. He is also involved in a financial scandal when it is revealed that he had taken money from several Indian princes to represent their interests in parliament.
Isaac Butt dies on May 5, 1879, in Clonskeagh in Dublin. His remains are brought by train to Stranorlar, County Donegal, where he is buried in a corner of the Church of Ireland cemetery beneath a tree by which he used to sit and dream as a boy. His grave has been restored and the memorial now includes a wreath.
Despite his chaotic lifestyle and political limitations, Butt is capable of inspiring deep personal loyalty. Some of his friends, such as John Butler Yeats and the future Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, retain a lasting hostility towards Parnell for his role in Butt’s downfall.
In May 2010 the Church of Ireland parishes of Stranorlar, Meenglass and Kilteevogue instigate an annual memorial Service and Lecture in Butt’s honour, inviting members of the professions of law, politics and journalism to reflect aspects of his life. Speakers have included Dr. Joe Mulholland, Senator David Norris, Dr. Chris McGimpsey and Prof. Brian Walker.
(Pictured: Isaac Butt, portrait by John Butler Yeats)
The union of the diocese of Glendalough with that of Dublin, having been promulgated by Pope Innocent III, is confirmed by Pope Honorius III on October 6, 1216.
The broad Dublin area is Christian long before Dublin has a distinct diocese, with monasteries such as Glendalough as well as at Finglas, Glasnevin, Rathmichael, Swords, and Tallaght. Several of these function as “head churches” and the most powerful of all is Glendalough.
In the early church in Ireland, the church has a monastic basis, with greatest power vested in the Abbots of the major communities. There are bishops but not organised dioceses in the modern sense, and the offices of abbot and bishop are often comprised in one person. Some early “Bishops of Dublin,” as far back as 633, are mentioned in Ware’s Antiquities of Ireland but the Diocese of Dublin is not considered to have begun until 1038.
The Kingdom of Dublin first seeks to have a bishop of their own in the 11th century, under Sitric MacAulaf, who has been on pilgrimage to Rome. He sends his chosen candidate, Donat, to be consecrated in Canterbury in 1038, and the new prelate sets up the Diocese of Dublin as a small territory within the walled city, over which he presides until 1074. The new diocese is not part of the Church in Ireland but of the Norse Province of Canterbury. Sitric also provides for the building of Christ Church Cathedral in 1038.
At the Synod of Ráth Breasail, convened in 1118 by Gillebert, Bishop of Limerick, on papal authority, the number of dioceses in Ireland is fixed at twenty-four. Dublin is not included as the city is described as lying within the Diocese of Glendalough and still attached to Canterbury.
In 1151, Pope Eugene III commissions Cardinal Giovanni Paparo to go to Ireland and establish four metropolitans. At the Synod of Kells in 1152, Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam, are created archiepiscopal sees. In a document drawn up by the then Archbishop of Tuam in 1214, Cardinal Paparo states that he delivered the pallium to Dublin which he determines to be preferred over Glendalough and appoints that the Glendalough diocese should be divided, and that one part thereof should fall to the metropolitan.
The part of North County Dublin known as Fingall is taken from Glendalough Diocese and attached to Dublin City. The new Archdiocese has 40 parishes, in deanaries based on the old senior monasteries. All dependence upon English churches such as Canterbury is also ended.
The founding Archbishop of the larger Dublin Diocese is Gregory, with the Bishops of Kildare, Ossory, Leighlin, Ferns, and Glendalough reporting to him.
In 1185, the Lord of Ireland, John Lackland, grants the merger of the dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough. This is initially without effect as the charter lacks papal approval. When the bishop Macrobius dies in 1192, a synod is held in Dublin under the direction of the papal legate Metthew O Enna. William Piro is elected as Bishop of Glendalough and remains in office at least until 1212. Robert de Bedford is elected as successor in 1213 or 1214 but never has the opportunity to take possession of the diocesan seat. Instead, John, now King of England, reissues a grant to join Glendalough to Dublin which is finally approved in by Pope Innocent III in 1216 and confirmed by his successor Honorius III in the same year.
seamus dubhghaill 