seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Minister of State at the Department of Education and Youth


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Austin Currie Begins Housing Allocation Discrimination Protest

On June 20, 1968, Austin Currie, Nationalist Party Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and a number of other people, begin a protest about discrimination in the allocation of housing by “squatting” (illegally occupying) in a house in Caledon, County Tyrone. The protesters are evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The next day the annual conference of the Nationalist Party unanimously approves of the protest action by Currie in Caledon. This is one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

Born in Coalisland, County Tyrone on October 11, 1939, Austin is the eldest of eleven children born to Mary (née O’Donnell) and John Currie. He is educated at the renowned St Patrick’s Academy, Dungannon, and graduates in politics and history from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

Currie becomes an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). He later speaks about the effect of partition on Catholics in Northern Ireland: “Partition was used to try to cut us off from the rest of the Irish nation. Unionists did their best to stamp out our nationalism and, the educational system, to the extent it could organise it, was oriented to Britain and we were not even allowed to use names such as Séamus or Seán. When my brothers’ godparents went to register their birth, they were told no such names as Séamus or Seán existed in Northern Ireland and were asked for the English equivalent.”

In 1964 Currie is elected in a by-election as a Nationalist MP for East Tyrone in the 10th House of Commons of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, following the death of the sitting Nationalist MP, Joe Stewart. He retains his seat in the 11th House of Commons in the 1965 Northern Ireland general election and the 12th House of Commons in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. This is the last election to the home rule Parliament at Stormort, before it is suspended by Government of the United Kingdom in March 1972, and formally abolished by the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973.

In 1970, Currie is a founder of the group that establishes the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). From 1973 to 1974, he is elected as an SDLP member of the short-lived devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. In 1974 he becomes Chief Whip of the SDLP, and in the same year becomes Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive. The Assembly and Executive collapse on May 28, 1974, after opposition from within the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Ulster Workers’ Council strike. This leads to the imposition of direct rule of Northern Ireland from London.

Currie contests the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat, but is unsuccessful on both attempts. He also is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat. That Assembly, which is an attempt by the Government of the United Kingdom to reintroduce devolved power-sharing, collapses in 1986 without executive ministerial functions ever being transferred to it from the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as no political agreement can be reached on power-sharing between the parties owing to nationalists abstentionism over the constituency boundaries used to elect members, and unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

Following his decision to quit Northern Ireland politics, and relocate his family to County Kildare, Currie becomes actively involved in politics in the Republic of Ireland. Partly due to his long-standing doubts about the commitment of politicians in the Republic to the plight of northern nationalists, he join the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West at the 1989 Irish general election.

In 1990, Fine Gael selects Currie as their candidate for the 1990 Irish presidential election, running against Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil TD, Brian Lenihan Sr, and Senator Mary Robinson for the Labour Party. The 1990 election is the first contested election for the Irish Presidency in 17 years. Currie receives 267,902 first-preference votes (approximately 17%) and is eliminated on the first count. The distribution of his votes sees Mary Robinson elected as Ireland’s first female president on the second count, beating Lenihan by more than 86,000 votes.

In his 2004 autobiography All Hell will Break Loose, Currie writes about his experience of running in the presidential election, and the prejudice he faced as a nationalist from Ulster in southern politics: “What annoyed, indeed angered me most was the suggestion that because I came from the North, I was not a real Irishman … what I called the partitionist mentality … [during the election campaign] the [then Fianna Fáil] Minister for Justice [Ray Burke] said Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes ‘had to go to Tyrone to find a candidate for the presidency’ … it was hard to take, particularly from so-called republicans.”

Following his defeat in the presidential election, Currie holds his Dáil seat in Dublin West at the 1992 and 1997 Irish general elections. Following the formation of the so-called Rainbow Coalition between Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, on December 20, 1994, newly appointed Taoiseach John Bruton appoints him as a Minister of State with responsibility for Children’s Rights at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, becoming the first ever minister in an Irish Government with dedicated responsibility for children. He holds this post until the appointment of a new Irish Government on June 26, 1997, following the 1997 Irish general election.

At the 2002 Irish general election Currie contests the new constituency of Dublin Mid-West, and fails to be elected. He immediately announces his retirement from electoral politics. He continues to speak and campaign for civil rights across the island of Ireland and for causes he believes in, such as justice for the families of the Disappeared during the Troubles. He and his wife and family are personal friends of the family of one of the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, from Donaghmore, County Tyrone. His daughter Emer Currie is elected in his former constituency of Dublin West at the 2024 Irish general election.

Following the deaths of Seamus Mallon and John Hume in January and August 2020 respectively, Currie becomes the last surviving founder of the SDLP.

Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at the age of 82 at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare. Following an initial funeral mass in Allentown, County Kildare, his remains are transferred to his original family home in Edendork, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, where a second funeral mass was celebrated at St. Malachy’s Church, Edendork. He is buried alongside his parents in the cemetery adjoining the church.


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Birth of Josepha Madigan, Fine Gael Politician

Josepha Madigan, former Fine Gael politician, is born in Dublin on May 21, 1970. She serves as Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight from July 2016 to November 2017, Minister for Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht from November 2017 to June 2020, and as Minister of State at the Department of Education from July 2020 to March 2024. She serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Rathdown constituency from 2016 to 2024.

Madigan attends Mount Anville Secondary School and Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She is married to Finbarr Hayes, and they have two children. Her father, Patrick Madigan, was a Fianna Fáil County Councillor in Dublin, and her mother, Patricia Madigan, was a barrister who had a background in Fine Gael. She and her family live in Mount Merrion, Dublin. She is a survivor of sexual assault.

Madigan is a qualified solicitor, who practises in family law for twenty years, prior to her election to Dáil Éireann. She is also certified as a mediator by the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland (MII) and is a previous Council member of the MII. She is a former Specialist Liaison Officer for Family Mediation in the MII.

Madigan is the author of the first book in Ireland on mediation: Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Ireland, a handbook for family lawyers and their clients (Jordan Publishing, 2012). She has also self-published a novel called Negligent Behaviour.

Madigan serves as a councillor for the local electoral area of Stillorgan on Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council, from May 2014 until her election as a TD in 2016.

Madigan issues a leaflet in 2014 claiming that providing accommodation for Travellers in her constituency would be “a waste of valuable resources.” When asked about this later, she claims, “Some people won’t want to live beside people in halting sites […] there might be more crime, that there might be anti-social behaviour.”

Madigan is elected to the 32nd Dáil at the 2016 Irish general election as a Fine Gael TD for the Dublin Rathdown constituency, defeating sitting Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter by nearly 1,000 votes. She is appointed Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in July 2017. She is a member of the Public Accounts Committee. She introduces a private member’s bill to reduce the waiting time for divorce in Ireland from four years to two, which is passed by the Dáil.

On November 30, 2017, Madigan is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, in a reshuffle following the resignation of the Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald.

On March 29, 2018, Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar appoints Madigan as the coordinator for the party’s Yes campaign in the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

In 2019, Madigan receives widespread coverage for her role in the personal injury legal claim of Fine Gael politician, Maria Bailey. It is alleged that her law practice, Madigan Solicitors, advised Bailey on her claim, however, Madigan refuses to make any comments on this citing client-solicitor confidentiality. In July 2019, an internal unpublished Fine Gael probe into the affair clears Madigan of any wrongdoing in regard to the claim. In late July 2019, the Irish Independent reports that “it is now known that she advised Ms. Bailey in the early stages of the claim.” It is also reported that her firm would earn €11,500 in fees if the Maria Bailey case were successful.

Madigan is re-elected at the 2020 Irish general election, taking the third seat behind Green Party Deputy Leader Catherine Martin and party colleague Neale Richmond. On July 1, 2020, she is appointed by the new government as Minister of State at the Department of Education with special responsibility for special education and inclusion. On January 14, 2021, she comes under fire for describing children without additional needs as “normal” while speaking in the Dáil. “We all know that even for normal children remote teaching is difficult but for children who have additional needs it is particularly difficult,” she says. Later that day on Twitter, she says she “sincerely apologises for the language she used. It is absolutely not what I meant to say.”

On January 20, 2021, speaking on RTÉ‘s Today with Claire Byrne, Madigan compares children with additional needs not attending school to the mother and baby homes. “We’ve spent the last week talking about mother and baby homes, where our most vulnerable were left to their own devices in less than satisfactory conditions and we’re now allowing further anxiety and upset to be placed on the shoulders of parents whose children desperately need to go back to school.” The Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and Related Matters is published the week prior to her comments. She later apologises in a statement: “I am, as are all involved in supporting these children [children with additional needs], passionate about vindicating their rights and in reaching for an analogy I chose poorly. I apologise fully.”

Shortly after the first report of the Creeslough explosion on October 7, 2022, Madigan tweets that she hopes “they find the culprits” and, after being criticised as irresponsible and insensitive, she quickly deletes the tweet.

On March 22, 2024, Madigan announces that she will resign as Minister of State and will not contest the next general election.


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Death of Jim Tunney, Fianna Fáil Politician

James C. Tunney, a Fianna Fáil politician, dies in Dublin on January 16, 2002.

Tunney is born on December 25, 1924, in Finglas, Dublin, the fourth child among three sons and five daughters of James Tunney, a farmer and Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) and senator, and M. Ellen Tunney (née Grimes), who both come from outside Westport, County Mayo. He is educated at St. Vincent’s C.B.S. in Glasnevin.

Tunney works in the Department of Agriculture from 1943 to 1955 and it is during this period that he studies part-time at University College Dublin (UCD), where he takes a BA in drama, English, and Irish before studying for a postgraduate qualification in Irish. From 1955 to 1962 he teaches drama at Vocational Education Committees (VEC) in Lucan, Balbriggan, and Garretstown, before being appointed headmaster of Blanchardstown VEC in 1962.

Tunney also plays at senior level for the Dublin county football team. He is on the winning side for Dublin in the 1948 All-Ireland Junior Football Championship.

A snappy dresser who earns the nickname “the yellow rose of Finglas,” Tunney is sometimes seen as pompous, a perception possibly attributable to his acting background, which once leads to an audition at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.

In 1963 Tunney joins Fianna Fáil, and stands for the party at the  1965 Irish general election but is not elected. He is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin North-West constituency at the 1969 Irish general election. He serves continuously in the Dáil until losing his seat at the 1992 Irish general election, having been a TD for Dublin Finglas from 1977 to 1981 when Dublin constituencies are reconfigured as 3-seaters, before being returned for Dublin North-West in 1981.

During this period Tunney serves as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (after 1978, Minister of State at the Department of Education) in three governments. He serves as Leas-Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann from 1981 to 1982, and from 1987 to 1993. He is also chair of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party for ten years. He is a member of Dublin City Council, and serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1984 to 1985.

Following Tunney’s death, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern describes him as “a parliamentarian and a gentleman who was passionately committed to serving his country.” Ahern adds, “he was not only a man of substance but one of style. From the flower that was always in his buttonhole to the elegance of his language in both Irish and English he had a commanding and stylish presence.”

Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan says Tunney had gained “the widespread affection and respect of colleagues of all political parties.”

Leader of the Labour Party Ruairi Quinn describes Tunney as a “thoughtful and courteous colleague” who carried out his duties with “fairness but also with wit and style.”


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Birth of Ciarán Cannon, Former Fine Gael Politician

Ciarán Cannon, former Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Galway East constituency from 2011 to 2024, is born on September 19, 1965, in Galway, County Galway. He previously serves as a Senator for the Progressive Democrats and is the last elected leader of that party. He serves as a Minister of State from 2011 to 2014 and again from 2017 to 2020. He serves as a Senator from 2007 to 2011, after being nominated by the Taoiseach.

Before entering politics, Cannon is a planning official for Galway City Council and Dublin City Council, as well as CEO and secretary of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust. In 2002, he is honoured as one of the Galway People of the Year.

As a member of the Progressive Democrats, Cannon is elected to Galway County Council in the 2004 Irish local elections, to represent the Loughrea local electoral area, with 1,307 first preferences. He is an unsuccessful candidate at the 2007 Irish general election in Galway East. He is nominated by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to the 23rd Seanad in 2007.

Cannon is elected as Leader of the Progressive Democrats in April 2008. He is the first leader of the party to sit as a Senator while serving as leader. At his first press conference as party leader, he states that he believes “there was passion, commitment, talent and knowledge within the PDs’ ranks to stage a big comeback.”

However, after speculation increases that Noel Grealish, one of the two Progressive Democrat TDs, intends to leave the party, Cannon announces in September 2008 that a party conference will be held on November 8, 2008, at which he will recommend that the party disband. The delegates present at the conference vote 201–161 to agree with this recommendation.

On March 24, 2009, Cannon announces his decision to resign the leadership of the Progressive Democrats and joins Fine Gael the same day. At the 2011 Irish general election, he is one of two Fine Gael TDs elected in Galway East.

On March 10, 2011, Cannon is appointed by the coalition government led by Enda Kenny as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills with responsibility for Training and Skills. He is dropped as a minister in a reshuffle on July 15, 2014. At the 2016 Irish general election, he is elected to the third seat in Galway East.

On June 20, 2017, Cannon is appointed by the minority government led by Leo Varadkar as Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with responsibility for the Diaspora and International Development. He calls for a “No” vote in the 2018 referendum to allow legislation on abortion.

In 2019, in recognition of his work in education, Cannon is appointed as a UNICEF global champion for education. He is one of seven Generation Unlimited Champions who advocates worldwide for the development of UNICEF’s Gen U programme.

At the 2020 Irish general election, Cannon is elected to the second seat in Galway East. He continues to serve as a minister of state until the formation of a new government on June 27, 2020.

On March 19, 2024, Cannon announces that he will not contest the next general election, blaming a “toxicity in politics.”

Cannon is a musician and songwriter, and recently collaborated with Irish folk singer Seán Keane and others on songwriting projects. One of his co-compositions, “Nature’s Little Symphony,” is performed in Dublin by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of the national Cruinniú celebrations on Easter Monday 2017. Both “Nature’s Little Symphony” and another of his compositions, “Gratitude,” are featured on the album Gratitude recorded by Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2018. On the August 10, 2018, Cannon plays piano with Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of a sold-out performance at the National Concert Hall. In 2019, he composes “An Túr,” a short piano instrumental to celebrate the birthday of W. B. Yeats.

In 2021 Cannon is commissioned to compose the soundtrack to a poem by Emily Cullen as part of the national commemoration of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.

In March 2024, Cannon begins presenting The Grey Lake Cafe, a radio show on Loughrea Community Radio featuring his own musical choices, and interviews with public figures who have a passion for music.

Cannon is also an avid cyclist and cycling safety advocate. He specialises in endurance cycling challenges and on June 19, 2021, he cycles Ireland end to end, a distance of 575 km, in 23 hours and 23 minutes, to raise money for charity.

On July 2, 2021, Cannon is involved in a road traffic collision and suffers serious injuries. On July 2, 2022 he marks the first anniversary of the incident by cycling 500 km around the border of County Galway. Marking the same date in 2023, he cycles 935 km (581 mi) in 56 hours, covering all 32 counties of the island of Ireland while fundraising for Hand In Hand, a charity that supports families challenged by childhood cancer.