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Tag Archives: President of Ireland


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Birth of Robert Erskine Childers, Writer & Fenian

Robert Erskine Childers, British writer universally known as Erskine Childers and whose mother is from County Clare, is born on June 25, 1870 in Mayfair, London, England. His works include the influential novel The Riddle of the Sands. He is the second son of Robert Caesar Childers, a translator and oriental scholar from an ecclesiastical family, and Anna Mary Henrietta, née Barton, from an Anglo-Irish landowning family of Glendalough House, Annamoe, County Wicklow. He is also the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton, and the father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers.

Childers is raised at the home of family members at Glendalough, County Wicklow. At the recommendation of his grandfather, Canon Charles Childers, he is sent to Haileybury College. There he wins an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studies the classical tripos and then law. He distinguishes himself as the editor of Cambridge Review, the university magazine.

Childers’s first published work is some light detective stories he contributes to the Cambridge Review while he is editor. His first book is In the Ranks of the C. I. V., an account of his experiences in the Boer War, but he writes it without any thought of publication.

After serving in the British army during the Boer War he becomes an Irish nationalist. In 1914, Childers smuggles a cargo of 900 Mauser Model 1871 rifles and 29,000 black powder cartridges to the Irish Volunteers movement at the fishing village of Howth, County Dublin on his yacht, Asgard.

Though he serves as the principal secretary to Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith at the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations, Childers opposes the treaty, supporting the anti-treaty forces during the Irish Civil War. Childers is captured with a pistol by Free Staters in November 1922 shortly after the Free State has passed legislation making such possession a capital offence. Ironically, the revolver Childers possesses is a gift from former comrade Michael Collins, who led the Free State until his death in an ambush three months earlier.

Childers is put on trial by a military court on the charge of possessing a small Spanish-made Gaztanaga Destroyer .32 calibre semi-automatic pistol on his person in violation of the Emergency Powers Resolution. Childers is convicted by the military court and sentenced to death on November 20, 1922.

While his appeal against the sentence is still pending, Childers is executed on November 24, 1922 by firing squad at the Beggar’s Bush Barracks in Dublin. Before his execution he shakes hands with each member of the firing squad. He also obtains a promise from his then 16-year-old son, the future President Erskine Hamilton Childers, to seek out and shake the hand of every man who has signed his death sentence. His final words, spoken to the firing squad, are, “Take a step or two forward, lads, it will be easier that way.”

Robert Erskine Childers is buried at Beggar’s Bush Barracks until 1923, when his body is exhumed and reburied in the republican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.


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Erskine Childers Elected Fourth President of Ireland

In a political upset, Erskine Hamilton Childers defeats Tom O’Higgins by a very narrow margin and is elected as the fourth President of Ireland on May 30, 1973.

Incumbent president Éamon de Valera is 90 years old and constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. His party, Fianna Fáil, seeks to get former Tánaiste Frank Aiken to run for the presidency, but he declines. Under pressure, former Tánaiste Erskine H. Childers agrees to run. The odds-on favourite is Fine Gael deputy leader, Tom O’Higgins, who had come within 1% of defeating Éamon de Valera in the 1966 presidential election.

Childers is a controversial nominee, owing not only to his British birth and upbringing but to his Protestantism. However, on the campaign trail his personal popularity proves enormous. In a political upset, Erskine H. Childers wins the presidency by 635,867 votes to 578,771.

Childers, though 67, quickly gains a reputation as a vibrant, extremely hard-working president, and becomes highly popular and respected. However, he has a strained relationship with the incumbent government, led by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave of Fine Gael. Childers has campaigned on a platform of making the presidency more open and hands-on, which Cosgrave views as a threat to his own agenda as head of government. He refuses to co-operate with Childers’ first priority upon taking office, the establishment of a think tank within Áras an Uachtaráin to plan the country’s future. Childers considers resigning from the presidency, but is convinced to remain by Cosgrave’s Foreign Minister, Garret FitzGerald. However, Childers remains detached from the government. Whereas previously, presidents had been briefed by taoisigh once a month, Cosgrave briefs President Childers and his successor, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, on average once every six months.

Though frustrated about the lack of power he has in the office, Childers plays an important behind-the-scenes role in easing the Northern Ireland conflict as former Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O’Neill meets secretly with Childers at Áras an Uachtaráin on at least one occasion.

Prevented from transforming the presidency as he desires, Childers instead throws his energy into a busy schedule of official visits and speeches, which is physically taxing. On November 17, 1974, just after making a speech to the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin, Childers suffers a heart attack. He dies the same day at Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.

Childers’s state funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, is attended by world leaders including the Earl Mountbatten of Burma (representing Queen Elizabeth II), the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Opposition, and presidents and crowned heads of state from Europe and beyond. He is buried in the grounds of the Church of Ireland Derralossary church in Roundwood, County Wicklow.


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Founding of the Royal University of Ireland

The Royal University of Ireland is founded by Royal Charter on April 27, 1880 in accordance with the University Education (Ireland) Act 1879 as an examining and degree-awarding university based on the model of the University of London. The first chancellor is the Irish chemist Robert Kane.

The university becomes the first university in Ireland that can grant degrees to women on a par with those granted to men, granting its first degree to a woman on October 22, 1882. In 1888 Letitia Alice Walkington has the distinction of becoming the first woman in Great Britain or Ireland to receive a degree of Bachelor of Laws. Among the honorary degree recipients of the university is Douglas Hyde, founder of the Gaelic League and later President of Ireland, who is awarded a DLitt in 1906.

The Royal University of Ireland is the successor to the Queen’s University of Ireland, dissolved in 1882, and the graduates, professors, students and colleges of that predecessor are transferred to the new university. In addition to the Queen’s Colleges, Magee College, University College Dublin, Cecillia St. Medical School, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth and Blackrock College present students for examinations as well, and no special status is accorded to the colleges of the former Queen’s University. After the 1880 reforms Catholic Colleges such as St. Patrick’s, Carlow College, Holy Cross College and Blackrock College come under the Catholic University, and with a number of other seminaries present students for examination by the RUI.

External students not of approved colleges can sit examinations of the Royal University although they are seen as being at a disadvantage to those of designated colleges whose professors are part of the university. In fact, many schools, including convent schools prepare students for the examinations of the Royal University.

Like the Queen’s University, the Royal University is entitled to grant any degree, similar to that of any other university in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, except in theology. The colleges themselves award degrees in theology and divinity.

The professorships and Senate of the Royal University are shared equally between Roman Catholics and Protestants. However, colleges of the university maintain full independence except in the awarding of degrees, and the compilation and enforcement of academic regulations and standards.

The members of the senate of the Royal University included Gerald Molloy, William Joseph Walsh, John Healy, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, George Arthur Hastings Forbes, 7th Earl of Granard, Daniel Mannix, George Johnston Allman.

(Pictured: Coat of Arms of the Royal University of Ireland)


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Birth of Michael D. Higgins, Ninth President of Ireland

Michael Daniel Higgins, politician, human rights activist, university lecturer, poet, and the ninth and current President of Ireland, is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on April 18, 1941. He takes office on November 11, 2011 following victory in the 2011 Irish presidential election.

At age five Higgins is separated from his parents, whose struggle to make ends meet is partly the product of his father’s ill health. He is raised in modest means by relatives in County Clare and starts his working life as a clerk in a bank. With a loan from a benefactor, he enters University College Galway, now National University of Ireland, Galway, at age 20 and continues his study with the benefit of scholarships. He serves as president of the student council and becomes involved with the Fianna Fáil party. Under the influence of politician Noël Browne, he soon switches allegiance to socialism and the Labour Party. An unashamed intellectual, Higgins continues his studies at Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Manchester. Before beginning a career in politics, he lectures in sociology and political science at Galway and is a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Twice Higgins runs unsuccessfully for a seat in the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, before being appointed to Seanad Éireann, the upper house, by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave in 1973. Higgins is then elected to represent Galway West in the Dáil (1981–82) and serves another term in the Seanad (1983–87), representing the National University of Ireland, before becoming a fixture in the Dáil in the seat for Galway West (1987–2011). He also serves two terms as the mayor of Galway (1982–83, 1991–92). Early on he earns a reputation as a leftist firebrand who opposes participation in coalition government. His radical commitment to human rights and to peace and justice in places such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cambodia, as well as his advocacy of progressive issues such as equal pay for women and the rights of people with disabilities, remain constant, but he mellows over the years to accept coalition rule.

In 1993, in the Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition government led by Albert Reynolds, Higgins becomes the minister for arts, culture, and the Gaeltacht (the districts in which the Irish language and the traditional national culture are best preserved). In that capacity he champions the Irish film industry and is responsible for the creation of the first Irish-language television station, Teilifís na Gaeilge (TG4). A poet who publishes four books of poetry before his election as president, Higgins earns a reputation as an impassioned and eloquent orator in both Irish and English.

By 2003, when he takes over the leadership of the Labour Party, the diminutive Higgins has become something of a national icon, known to most people simply as “Michael D.” He seeks Labour’s nomination for the presidency in 2004 unsuccessfully, but in 2011 he is elected the ninth president of Ireland with some 40 percent of the first-preference votes. In the process he bests heavily favoured independent Seán Gallagher, who stumbles badly in a televised debate just before the election, as well as Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader who steps down temporarily as the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland to run.


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Birth of Irish Artist Patrick Scott

patrick-scottPatrick Scott, Irish artist, is born in Kilbrittain, County Cork, on January 24, 1921. He is perhaps best known for his gold paintings, abstracts incorporating geometrical forms in gold leaf against a pale tempura background. He also produces tapestries and carpets.

He has his first exhibition in 1944, but trains as an architect and does not become a full-time artist until 1960. He works for fifteen years for the Irish architect Michael Scott, assisting, for example, in the design of Busáras, the central bus station in Dublin. He is also responsible for the orange livery of Irish intercity trains.

His paintings are in several important collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He wins the Guggenheim Award in 1960 and represents Ireland in the 1960 Venice Biennale. The Douglas Hyde Gallery holds a major retrospective of his work in 1981 and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin holds a major survey in 2002. His works are distinguished by their purity and sense of calm, reflecting his own interest in Zen Buddhism.

In October 2013, Scott weds his companion of 30 years, Eric Pearce, in a civil ceremony at the Dublin Registry Office.

On July 11, 2007, Scott, who is a founding member of Aosdána, is conferred with the title of Saoi, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon an Irish artist. The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, makes the presentation, placing a gold torc, the symbol of the office of Saoi, around his neck. No more than seven living members may hold this honour at any one time.

Patrick Scott dies in Ballsbridge, Dublin, on February 14, 2014 at the age of 93. He is survived by his partner.


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Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

constitution-of-ireland-2The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, which is effected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 1972, is approved by referendum on December 7, 1972 and signed into law on January 5, 1973.

The amendment deletes the entirety of Article 44.1.2 which allowed the State to recognise the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.

Also deleted by the amendment is Article 44.1.3 which allowed the State to also recognise the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, as well as the Jewish Congregations and the other religious denominations existing in Ireland at the date of the coming into operation of this Constitution.

In drafting the Irish constitution in 1936 and 1937, Éamon de Valera and his advisers choose to reflect what has been a contemporary willingness by constitution drafters and lawmakers in Europe to mention and in some ways recognise religion in explicit detail. This contrasts with many 1920s constitutions, notably the Constitution of the Irish Free State of 1922, which, following the secularism of the initial period following World War I, simply prohibits any discrimination based on religion or avoids religious issues entirely.

De Valera, his advisers, and the men who put words to de Valera’s concepts for the constitution face conflicting demands in his drafting of the article on religion. In contemporary terms, the Amendment marks a defeat for conservative Catholics and Pope Pius XI explicitly withholds his approval from it.

Though perceived in retrospect as a sectarian article, Article 44 is praised in 1937 by leaders of Irish Protestant churches, notably the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, and by Jewish groups. Conservative Catholics condemn it as “liberal.”

When the contents of Article 44 are put to Pope Pius XI by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, then Cardinal Secretary of State, later Pope Pius XII, the pope states in diplomatic language, “We do not approve, nor do we not disapprove – we will remain silent.” It is said that the Vatican is privately more appreciative of the constitution, and Pius XII later praises it.

The Fifth Amendment is introduced by the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch and supported by every other major political party. The Catholic Church does not voice any objection to the amendment, but it is opposed by some conservative Catholics. Some leading members of the Church of Ireland and the Jewish Community say during the campaign that while they appreciate the Article’s recognition of their existence in 1937, it is no longer needed in the 1970s and has lost its usefulness.

The referendum on the amendment occurs on the same day as the referendum on the Fourth Amendment which lowers the voting age to eighteen. The Fifth Amendment is approved by 721,003 (84.4%) in favour and 133,430 (15.6%) against.

Having completed its passage through the Oireachtas and been adopted by the people, it is enacted by being signed into constitutional law by the President of Ireland, the man who had drafted the original article, Éamon de Valera.


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Mary Robinson Elected First Woman President of the Republic

mary-robinson-1Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland on November 7, 1990. She becomes the first Labour Party candidate, the first woman, and the first non-Fianna Fáil candidate in the history of contested presidential elections to win the presidency.

Brian Lenihan, the Tánaiste and Minister for Defence is chosen by Fianna Fáil as their candidate, though he faces a late challenge for the party nomination from another senior minister, John P. Wilson, TD. Lenihan is popular and widely seen as humorous and intelligent. He has delivered liberal policy reform (relaxed censorship in the 1960s), and is seen as a near certainty to win the presidency.

Fine Gael, after trying and failing to get former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and former Tánaiste Peter Barry to run, ultimately nominate the former civil rights campaigner and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) member Austin Currie. Currie is elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1989 general election and has been a minister in Brian Faulkner‘s power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland from 1973–1974. However Currie has little experience in the politics of the Republic and is widely seen as the party’s last choice, nominated only when no one else is available.

The Labour Party lets it be known that it would for the first time run a candidate. Along with the Workers’ Party, Labour nominates the independent candidate Mary Robinson, SC, a former Labour Party member and senator, and liberal campaigner. Robinson is a former Reid Professor of Law in the Trinity College, Dublin. She is previously involved in the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform and the campaign to save Wood Quay.

Lenihan enters the race as odds-on favourite. No Fianna Fáil candidate has ever lost a presidential election. However, Lenihan is derailed when he confirms in an on-the-record interview with freelance journalist and academic researcher Jim Duffy that he has been involved in controversial attempts to pressurise the President, Patrick Hillery, over a controversial parliamentary dissolution in 1982. As a result of the contrast between his public denials during the campaign and his confirmation during an earlier interview recorded in May, he is dismissed from the Irish government.

At this point a cabinet colleague, Pádraig Flynn, launches a controversial personal attack on Mary Robinson “as a wife and mother,” an attack that is itself attacked in response as “disgraceful” on live radio by Michael McDowell, a senior member of the Progressive Democrats, then in coalition with Fianna Fáil and up to that point supporting Lenihan’s campaign. Flynn’s attack is a fatal blow to Lenihan’s campaign, causing many female supporters of Lenihan to vote for Robinson in a gesture of support.

Lenihan nonetheless receives a plurality of first-choice votes. Mary Robinson beats Austin Currie, forcing Fine Gael’s candidate into third place. Under Ireland’s system of single transferable vote, Robinson receives over 75% of the transfers when Austin Currie is eliminated, beating Lenihan into second place and becoming the seventh President of Ireland.

While the role of the presidency in day-to-day politics is a very limited one, the Robinson presidency is regarded by many observers as a watershed in Irish society, symbolising the shift away from the conservative ultra-Catholic male-dominated Ireland which existed up until the end of the 1980s to the more liberal society symbolised by Robinson.

Robinson is generally credited with raising the profile of the office of president, which has been considered little more than an honorary figurehead position under her predecessors. Prior to Mary Robinson’s presidency it was not unusual to hear commentators advocating the abolition of the office of president, a viewpoint that is almost never advanced nowadays.