The senior surviving leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, de Valera is jailed by the British after his death sentence for his participation in the Rising is reduced to life imprisonment. He likes to tell the story that his life was spared because of his American birth, a story he tells the visiting United States presidentJohn F. Kennedy at a State reception in 1963. However, it is most likely that his court-martial is scheduled too late after the public and popular pressure becomes too much on the British Government who call a stop to the executions. British prison authorities are surely glad to see him go. He had led Irish prisoners in acts of defiance in several different prisons.
At Dartmoor Prison, de Valera goes on hunger strike and gets a fellow prisoner off bread and water. When all the Irish prisoners are transferred to Lewes Jail, he organizes a work stoppage and gets another man off bread and water. The exasperated British then split up the Irish prisoners, sending de Valera to Maidstone Prison, whose governor has a reputation for breaking men. De Valera meets him head on, refusing to stand at attention or button his jacket as required in his presence, then piercing his pride by wondering aloud, to the delight of the British prison guards, why a military-age man such as he is not at the front. The governor avoids him after that.
Soon after this, de Valera is transferred to Pentonville Prison for early release. Most of the notable leaders of the 1916 Rising, including Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Thomas Ashe and others, had been released from various British prisons. Before his release, they congregate at Pentonville and say a prayer over the grave of Roger Casement, who had been hanged there.
As a free man, de Valera continues to plague Ireland’s foreign rulers. He is handed a telegram saying that he is going to stand as the Sinn Féin candidate in the East Clare by-election. This is the start of a political career that extends over fifty years.
The treaty had been intended to enter into force on January 1, 2009, but has to be delayed following the Irish rejection. However, the Lisbon treaty is approved by Irish voters when the Twenty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland is approved in the second Lisbon referendum, held in October 2009.
The Treaty of Lisbon is signed by the member states of the European Union on December 13, 2007. It is in large part a revision of the text of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) after its rejection in referendums in France in May 2005 and in the Netherlands in June 2005. The Treaty of Lisbon preserves most of the content of the Constitution, especially the new rules on the functioning of the European Institutions but gives up any symbolic or terminologic reference to a constitution.
Because of the decision of the Supreme Court of Ireland in Crotty v. An Taoiseach (1987), an amendment to the Constitution is required before it can be ratified by Ireland. Ireland is the only one of the then fifteen EU member states to put the Treaty to the people in a referendum. Ratification of the Treaty in all other member states is decided upon by national parliaments alone.
The government parties of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats are in favour of the treaty, but the other government party, the Green Party, is divided on the issue. At a special convention on January 19, 2008, the leadership of the Green Party fails to secure a two-thirds majority required to make support for the referendum official party policy. As a result, the Green Party itself does not participate in the referendum debate, although individual members are free to be involved in whatever side they chose. All Green Party members of the Oireachtas support the Treaty. The main opposition parties of Fine Gael and the Labour Party are also in favour. Only one party represented in the Oireachtas, Sinn Féin, is opposed to the treaty, while minor parties opposed to it include the Socialist Party, the Workers’ Party and the Socialist Workers Party. Independent TD’s Tony Gregory and Finian McGrath, Independent MEPKathy Sinnott, and Independent members of the Seanad from the universities David Norris, Shane Ross and Rónán Mullen advocate a “No” vote as well.
The Government sends bilingual booklets written in English and Irish, explaining the Treaty, to all 2.5 million Irish households. However, compendiums of the two previous treaties, of which the Lisbon Treaty is intended to be a series of reforms and amendments, remain unavailable in Ireland. Some commentators argue that the treaty remains essentially incomprehensible in the absence of such a compendium.
On March 12, 2008, the Libertas Institute, a lobby group started by businessman Declan Ganley, launches a campaign called Facts, not politics which advocates a “No” vote in the referendum. A month later, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeals to Irish people to vote “Yes” in the referendum while on a visit to Ireland. The anti-Lisbon Treaty campaign group accuses the government and Fine Gael of a U-turn on their previous policy of discouraging foreign leaders from visiting Ireland during the referendum campaign. The European Commissioner for Internal MarketCharlie McCreevy admits he had not read the Treaty from cover to cover and says, “he would not expect any sane person to do so.”
At the start of May, the Irish Alliance for Europe launches its campaign for a “Yes” vote in the referendum this consists of trade unionists, business people, academics and politicians. Its members include Garret FitzGerald, Ruairi Quinn, Pat Cox and Michael O’Kennedy. The TaoiseachBrian Cowen states that should any member of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party campaign against the treaty, they will likely be expelled from the party.
On May 21, 2008, the executive council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions votes to support a “Yes” vote in the referendum. Rank and file members of the individual unions are not balloted, and the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) advises its 45,000 members to vote “No.” The Irish bishops conference states the Catholic Church‘s declaration that the treaty will not weaken Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion, however the conference does not advocate either a “Yes” or “No” vote. By the start of June, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party have united in their push for a “Yes” vote despite earlier divisions. The two largest farming organisations, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) and the Irish Farmers’ Association call for a “Yes” vote, the latter giving its support after assurances from Taoiseach Brian Cowen that Ireland will use its veto in Europe if a deal on World Trade reform is unacceptable.
There were 3,051,278 voters on the electoral register. The vast majority of voting takes place on Thursday, June 12, between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Counting begins at 9:00 a.m. the following morning. Several groups vote before the standard polling day, with some casting postal votes before June 9. These include members of the Irish Defence Forces serving in United Nations peacekeeping missions, Irish diplomats and their spouses abroad, members of the Garda Síochána, those unable to vote in person due to physical illness or disability, those who are unable to vote in person due to their employment (including students) and prisoners.
Votes are counted separately in each Dáil constituency. The overall verdict is formally announced by the Referendum Returning officer in Dublin Castle by accumulating the constituency totals.
(Pictured: Campaign posters in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin)
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.
After graduating, Gwynn spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin, Irish language writer whose chosen theme is contemporary urban life, dies on June 5, 1985. He is acknowledged as an important Irish language modernist. He is also active in the Irish republican movement and a member of Sinn Féin.
Ó Súilleabháin is born on the Beara Peninsula in County Cork on July 29, 1932. His mother, Máire Áine Ní Dhrisceoil, is a primary school teacher and his father, John O’Sullivan, is a small farmer. He marries Úna Ní Chléirigh on October 28, 1954, and they have two sons and three daughters.
Best known now for his literary work, Ó Súilleabháin writes ten novels, two of them for teenagers. Maeldún (1972) is a pioneering Irish novel that explores sexuality. He writes seven unpublished plays but most of them are shown in Damer Hall and the Peacock Theatre. Three plays that he writes include Bior, Ontos and Macalla and he writes a collection of short stories, Muintir (1970). A story from Muintir called ‘D’ is translated into English and adapted for the stage by Vivian McAlister and is performed by the Dublin University Players in May 1977.
Like Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, Ó Súilleabháin “challenged the critical orthodoxy by openly proclaiming that their standards could not be those of the Gaeltacht and by demanding a creative freedom that would acknowledge hybridity and reject the strictures of the linguistic purists.” He and Máirtín Ó Cadhain are considered the two most innovative Irish language authors to emerge in the 1960s. He often writes in a stream of consciousness, and his style influences younger writers. His writing “explores the problem of recovering idealism and cultural wholeness in an increasingly shallow and materialistic Irish society.” He is elected as a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and wins more literary prizes than any other living Irish author.
Ó Súilleabháin writes a collection of poetry, Cosa Gréine, which is published and launched in Dublin in 2013, twenty-eight years after his death.
Ó Súilleabháin is an active Irish republican, particularly in publicizing the republican struggle, and is a member of Sinn Féin’s ruling body beginning in 1971. He spends short periods in prison because of activities related to his political beliefs.
McCabe resigns his Dáil seat on October 30, 1924, along with several other TDs, and the resulting by-election on March 11, 1925, is won by the Cumann na nGaedheal candidate Martin Roddy. He does not stand for public office again and returns to his post as a schoolteacher.
In the 1930s McCabe is involved with the short-lived but widely followed Irish Christian Front (ICF), serving as the organisation’s secretary and announcing its creation to the public on August 22, 1936. He is also a member of the Blueshirts during this period and later the Irish Friends of Germany (later known as the “National Club”) during World War II, a would-be Nazi Collaborator group in the event Germany were to invade Ireland. He chairs their meetings, denies the group is a fifth column and expresses the belief that a German victory will lead to a United Ireland. He is interned in 1940–41 because of his pro-German sympathies, which he claims resulted from the desire to “see the very lifeblood squeezed out of England.”
In 1935, McCabe co-founds the Educational Building Society with Thomas J. O’Connell. He retires from teaching in the 1940s and becomes the full-time managing director of the EBS.
McCabe dies in Dublin on May 31, 1972, leaving his wife, son, and three daughters. There is a bronze bust of him in the headquarters of the Educational Building Society, Westmoreland Street, Dublin.
Higgins returns to Ireland and attends University College Dublin (UCD), studying English and French. For several years he is a teacher in several Dublin inner city schools. While at university he joins the Labour Party and becomes active in the Militant Tendency, an entryistTrotskyist group that operates within the Labour Party. Throughout his time in the Labour Party, he is a strong opponent of coalition politics, along with TDs Emmet Stagg and Michael D. Higgins. He is elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s. In 1989, he is expelled alongside 13 other members of Militant Tendency by party leader Dick Spring. The group eventually leaves the party and forms Militant Labour, which becomes the Socialist Party in 1996.
Higgins speaks out against the Iraq War while a TD, and addresses the Dublin leg of the March 20, 2003 International Day of Action. He is also prominent in the successful 2005 campaign to bring Nigerian school student Olukunle Eluhanla back to Ireland after he had been deported. He remains an opponent of the deportation policy.
Higgins uses his platform in the Dáil to raise the issue of exploitation of migrant and guest workers in Ireland. He and others claim that many companies are paying migrants below the minimum wage and, in some cases, not paying overtime rates. He expresses opposition in the Dáil to the jailing of the Rossport Five in July 2005. He raises the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in the Dáil in November 2005, requesting new legislation to regulate what he describes as “these modern slavers.”
Higgins is elected again as TD for Dublin West at the 2011 Irish general election. He wins the third seat (of four) with 8,084 first preference votes. In his first speech in the 31st Dáil, he opposed the nomination of Fine Gael‘s Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. On May 4, 2011, Kenny is forced to apologise to Higgins in the Dáil after falsely accusing him of being a supporter of Osama bin Laden after Higgins offers criticism of his assassination by the CIA. He had asked the Taoiseach, “Is assassination only justified if the target is a reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-human rights obscurantist like bin Laden?”
In the Dáil, Higgins accuses TánaisteEamon Gilmore of doing nothing for the 14 Irish citizens being held “incommunicado” by Israel in November 2011. In December 2011, he describes as a disgraceful campaign of intimidation the fines imposed by the government on people who are unable to pay a new household charge brought in as part of the latest austerity budget and says to Enda Kenny that he will be “the new Captain Boycott of austerity in this country.” He asks that Minister for FinanceMichael Noonan provide EBS staff with the 13th month end-of-year payment they are being denied.
In September 2012, Higgins publicly disagrees with former Socialist Party colleague Clare Daly, saying it is “unfortunate” that she has resigned from the party, but that it is impossible for Daly under the banner of the Socialist Party to continue to offer political support to Mick Wallace, who is at that time embroiled in scandal.
Higgins announces in April 2014 that he will not contest the next Dáil election. At the time he states his belief that the “baton of elected representation” should be carried by another generation of Socialist Party politicians — like Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy.
Following Fine Gael’s defeat at the 1977 Irish general election, the new leader, Garret FitzGerald, appoints Bruton to the front bench as Spokesperson on Agriculture. He is later promoted as Spokesperson for Finance. He plays a prominent role in Fine Gael’s campaign in the 1981 Irish general election, which results in another coalition with the Labour Party, with FitzGerald as Taoiseach. He receives a personal vote in Meath of nearly 23%, and at the age of only 34 is appointed Minister for Finance, the most senior position in the cabinet. In light of overwhelming economic realities, the government abandons its election promises to cut taxes. The government collapses unexpectedly on the night of January 27, 1982, when Bruton’s budget, that was to impose an unpopular value-added tax (VAT) on children’s shoes, is defeated in the Dáil.
The minority Fianna Fáil government which follows only lasts until November 1982, when Fine Gael once again returns to power in a coalition government with the Labour Party. However, when the new government is formed, Bruton is moved from Finance to become Minister for Industry and Energy. After a reconfiguration of government departments in 1983, he becomes Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1986, he is appointed again as Minister for Finance. Although he is Minister for Finance, he never presents his budget. The Labour Party withdraws from the government due to a disagreement over his budget proposals leading to the collapse of the government and another election.
Following the 1987 Irish general election, Fine Gael suffers a heavy defeat. Garret FitzGerald resigns as leader immediately, and a leadership contest ensues between Alan Dukes, Peter Barry and Bruton himself, with Dukes being the ultimate victor. Dukes’s term as leader is lackluster and unpopular. The party’s disastrous performance in the 1990 Irish presidential election, in which the party finishes in a humiliating and then unprecedented third in a national election, proves to be the final straw for the party and Dukes is forced to resign as leader shortly thereafter. Bruton, who is the deputy leader of Fine Gael at the time, is unopposed in the ensuing leadership election.
Bruton’s election is seen as offering Fine Gael a chance to rebuild under a far more politically experienced leader. However, his perceived right-wing persona and his rural background are used against him by critics and particularly by the media. However, to the surprise of critics and of conservatives, in his first policy initiative he calls for a referendum on a Constitutional amendment permitting the enactment of legislation allowing for divorce in Ireland.
By the 1992 Irish general election, the anti-Fianna Fáil mood in the country produces a major swing to the opposition, but that support goes to the Labour Party, not Bruton’s Fine Gael, which actually loses a further 10 seats. Even then, it initially appears that Fine Gael is in a position to form a government. However, negotiations stall in part from Labour’s refusal to be part of a coalition which would include the libertarian Progressive Democrats, as well as Bruton’s unwillingness to take Democratic Left into a prospective coalition. The Labour Party breaks off talks with Fine Gael and opts to enter a new coalition with Fianna Fáil.
In late 1994, the government of Fianna Fáil’s Albert Reynolds collapses. Bruton is able to persuade Labour to end its coalition with Fianna Fáil and enter a new coalition government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left. He faces charges of hypocrisy for agreeing to enter government with Democratic Left, as Fine Gael campaigned in the 1992 Irish general election on a promise not to enter government with the party. Nevertheless, on December 15, 1994, aged 47, he becomes the then youngest ever Taoiseach. This is the first time in the history of the state that a new government is installed without a general election being held.
Bruton’s politics are markedly different from most Irish leaders. Whereas most leaders had come from or identified with the independence movement Sinn Féin (in its 1917–22 phase), Bruton identifies more with the more moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) tradition that Sinn Féin had eclipsed at the 1918 Irish general election.
Continued developments in the Northern Ireland peace process and Bruton’s attitude to Anglo-Irish relations come to define his tenure as Taoiseach. In February 1995, he launches the Anglo-Irish “Framework Document” with the British prime ministerJohn Major. It foreshadows the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which, among other things, establishes an elected, power-sharing executive authority to be run by these onetime adversaries, ending 30 years of bloodletting that had claimed more than 3,000 lives. However, he takes a strongly critical position on the British Government‘s reluctance to engage with Sinn Féin during the Irish Republican Army‘s 1994–1997 ceasefire. He also establishes a working relationship with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin; however, both are mutually distrustful of each other.
The coalition remains in force to contest the 1997 Irish general elections, which are indecisive, and Bruton serves as acting taoiseach until the Dáil convenes in late June and elects a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats government. He retires from Irish politics in 2004 and serves as the European Union Ambassador to the United States (2004–09).
Bruton dies at the age of 76 on February 6, 2024, at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, following a long bout with cancer. A state funeral is held on February 10 at St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Church in Dunboyne.
On Friday, May 17, 1918, the British government orders the arrest and imprisonment of all leading members of Sinn Féin, claiming they were involved in a plan to import arms from Germany. The British cover for these arrests is a bogus “German Plot,” which has since been thoroughly discredited.
The “German Plot” is a spurious conspiracy that the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland claims to exist between the Sinn Féin movement and the German Empire in May 1918. Allegedly, the two factions conspire to start an armed insurrection in Ireland during World War I, which would divert the British war effort. The administration uses these claims to justify the internment of Sinn Féin leaders, who are actively opposing attempts to introduce conscription in Ireland and more Irishmen being used as cannon fodder in service to their oppressors.
Historian Paul McMahon characterises the “Plot” as “a striking illustration of the apparent manipulation of intelligence in order to prod the Irish authorities into more forceful action.” Republicans are tipped off about the impending arrests, allowing some to escape capture while others choose to be taken in order to secure a propaganda victory. The internment is counterproductive for the British, imprisoning the more accommodating Sinn Féin leadership while failing to capture members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who are more committed to physical force republicanism.
The British live to regret one man who slips through their fingers that spring. Michael Collins uses the months he might have spent in an English prison assembling and consolidating his control of an intelligence organisation and putting it on a more focused military footing that soon makes the Empire squeal.
Even at the time, the proposition that the Sinn Féin leadership are directly planning with the German authorities to open another military front in Ireland is largely seen as spurious. Irish nationalists generally view the “German Plot” not as an intelligence failure but as a black propaganda project to discredit the Sinn Féin movement, particularly to an uninformed public in the United States. McMahon comments that this belief is mistaken, and that the authorities acted honestly but on the basis of faulty intelligence. It is still a matter of study and conjecture what impact it had on U.S. foreign policy regarding the 1919 bid for international recognition of the Irish Republic.
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.
Gerard “Jock” Davison, a former commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast and later a supporter of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy, is shot dead in the city shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2015, in the Markets area of south Belfast at the junction of Welsh Street and Upper Stanfield.
One of the first operations Davison is involved in is the shooting of Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO) Belfast Brigade commander Sammy Ward on October 31, 1992, during the Night of the Long Knives in Belfast.
Davison, the former IRA man, who more recently is a community worker in the working-class Markets area of Belfast, is questioned about the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney in January 2005. He is released without charge. He always denies ordering the murder of the father of two following an argument outside Magennis’s Bar in the city centre.
On May 5, 2015, around 9:00 a.m., Davison is shot numerous times at Welsh Street in the Markets area of south Belfast. While police do not identify who killed him, Kevin McGuigan, a former subordinate of Davison’s, is named as the chief suspect after he is also shot dead, reportedly by members of the Provisional IRA, on August 12, 2015.
On the evening of the killing, The Guardian’s Henry McDonald reports: “Davison is the most senior pro-peace processrepublican to have been killed since the IRA ceasefire of 1997. Security sources said it was highly unlikely that any Ulster loyalist group was behind the murders, adding that the killers may instead have come from within the nationalist community, possibly from people who had a longstanding grudge against the victim.”
Alasdair McDonnell, the Belfast SouthSocial Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Westminster candidate, condemns the shooting, saying, “This is a horrendous crime and those responsible have shown no regard for anyone that could have been caught in the middle of it during the school rush hour. My thoughts and prayers are with the individual’s family at this traumatic time.” He adds, “People here want to move on from the violence of the past. This community will reject those who bring murder and mayhem to our streets. I would appeal to anyone with any information to bring it forward as soon as possible.”
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says, “People will be appalled by this morning’s murder in the Markets area of south Belfast. This brutal act will be condemned by all sensible people. There can be no place today for such actions. I would urge anyone with any information to bring that forward to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland).”
Following his arrest in Fuengirola in August 2021, it is revealed Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch is to be questioned in relation to a weapon used in Davison’s murder.
seamus dubhghaill 