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Birth of Alan Shatter, Lawyer, Author & Fine Gael Politician

Alan Joseph Shatter, Irish lawyer, author and former Fine Gael politician who serves as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence (2011-14), is born into a Jewish family in Dublin on February 14, 1951. He also serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South constituency (1981-2002, 2007-16). He leaves Fine Gael in early 2018 and unsuccessfully contests the 2024 Irish general election as an independent candidate for Dublin Rathdown.

Shatter is the son of Reuben and Elaine Shatter, an English couple who meet by chance when they are both on holiday in Ireland in 1947. He is educated at The High School, Dublin, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Europa Institute of the University of Amsterdam. In his late teens, he works for two months in Israel on a kibbutz. He is a partner in the Dublin law firm Gallagher Shatter (1977-2011). As a solicitor he acts as advocate in many seminal and leading cases determined both by the Irish High and Supreme Courts. He is the author of one the major academic works on Irish family law which advocates substantial constitutional and family law reform.

Shatter enters politics at the 1979 Irish local elections, winning a seat on Dublin County Council for the Rathfarnham local electoral area. He retains this seat until 1999, becoming a member of South Dublin County Council in 1994. He is first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1981 as a Fine Gael TD and is re-elected at each subsequent election until he loses his seat in the 2002 Irish general election. He is re-elected at the 2007 Irish general election.

Shatter is Fine Gael Front Bench spokesperson on Law Reform (1982, 1987–88), the Environment (1989–91), Labour (1991), Justice (1992–93), Equality and Law Reform (1993–94), Health and Children (1997–2000), Justice, Law Reform and Defence (2000–02), Children (2007–10) and Justice and Law Reform (2010–11).

On March 9, 2011, Shatter is appointed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny as both Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence.

Under Shatter’s steerage, a substantial reform agenda is implemented with nearly 30 separate pieces of legislation published, many of which are now enacted including the Personal Insolvency Act 2012, Criminal Justice Act 2011, DNA Database Act, and the Human Rights and Equality Commission Act.

Under Shatter’s guidance, major reforms are introduced in 2011 into Ireland’s citizenship laws and a new Citizenship Ceremony is created. He both devises and pilots Ireland’s first ever citizenship ceremony which takes place in June 2011 and a new inclusive citizenship oath which he includes in his reforming legislation. During his time as Minister, he clears an enormous backlog of citizenship applications, and 69,000 foreign nationals become Irish citizens. Some applications had lain dormant for 3 to 4 years. He introduces a general rule that save where there is some real complication, all properly made citizenship applications should be processed within a six-month period. He also takes steps to facilitate an increased number of political refugees being accepted into Ireland and creates a special scheme to facilitate relations of Syrian families already resident in Ireland who are either caught up in the Syrian civil war, or in refugee camps elsewhere as a result of the Syrian civil war, to join their families in Ireland.

Shatter enacts legislation before the end of July 2011 to facilitate access to financial documentation and records held by third parties in investigations into banking scandals and white-collar crime. The legislation is first used by the Gardaí in September 2011.

During Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2013, Shatter chairs the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) meetings and, in January 2013, in Dublin Castle, the meeting of EU Defence Ministers. Under his guidance, Ireland plays a more active role than in the past in EU defence matters and in deepening Ireland’s participation in NATO’s partnership for peace. During the Irish Presidency, substantial progress is made at the European Union level in the adoption and development of new legislation and measures across a broad range of Justice and Home Affairs issues.

Shatter implements substantial reform in the Department of Defence and restructures the Irish Defence Forces. He is a strong supporter of the Irish Defence Forces participation in international peacekeeping and humanitarian engagements and is an expert on the Middle East. As a member of the Irish Parliament and as Minister on many occasions, he visits Irish troops participating in United Nations (UN) missions in the Middle East. Under his watch contracts are signed for the acquisition of two new naval vessels with an option to purchase a third. All three naval vessels are now part of the Irish Naval Service and have been actively engaged in recent years in rescuing drowning refugees in the Mediterranean Sea attempting to enter Europe.

As Minister for Defence he enacts legislation to grant a pardon and an amnesty to members of the Irish Defence Forces who deserted during World War II to fight on the allied side against Nazi Germany and gives a state apology for their post-war treatment by the Irish State.

Shatter is the minister responsible for two amendments to the Constitution of Ireland which are passed in referendums: the Twenty-ninth Amendment in 2011 to allow for the reduction of judges’ pay, and the Thirty-third Amendment in 2013 to establish a Court of Appeal. Just prior to his resignation from government, the draft legislation to create the court is published and the court is established and sitting by October 2014.

The jurisdictions of the courts are extended for the first time in 20 years and the maximum civil damages payable for the emotional distress of bereaved relations following a negligent death is increased.

As a politician, Shatter plays a lead role in effecting much of the constitutional and legislative change he advocates. He is a former chairperson of FLAC (the Free Legal Advice Centres), a former chairperson of CARE, an organisation that campaigns for childcare and children’s legislation reform in the 1970s and a former President of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports.

Shatter is a founder member of the Irish Soviet Jewry Committee in 1970 and pioneers a successful all party Dáil motion on the plight of Soviet Jewry (1984) and visits various refuseniks in Moscow in 1985. He is a former chairperson of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee (1996-97) and initiates the creation of an Ireland/Israel Parliamentary Friendship group in 1997, leading a number of visits to Israel by members of the Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann.

Shatter is the author of the satirical book Family Planning Irish Style (1979), and the novel Laura (1989). In 2017 his biography, Life is a Funny Business, is published by Poolbeg Press and in 2019 Frenzy and Betrayal: The Anatomy of a Political Assassination is published by Merrion Press. In 2023, his book Cyril’s Lottery of Life, a comedic book with an English solicitor from a small town as its protagonist, is published.


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Death of Musicologist Francis Llewellyn Harrison

Francis Llewellyn Harrison, better known as “Frank Harrison” or “Frank Ll. Harrison” and one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist, dies in Canterbury, England, on December 29, 1987.

Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turns to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.

Harrison is born in Dublin on September 29, 1905, the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May (née Nash). He becomes a chorister at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1912 and is educated at the cathedral grammar school and Mountjoy School. A competent organist, he is deputy organist at St. Patrick’s from 1925 to 1928. In 1920, he also begins musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studies with John Francis Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano). In 1926, he graduates Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and is awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19. He then works in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St. Canice’s Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.

In 1930, Harrison emigrates to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 1933, he studies briefly with Marcel Dupré in France but returns to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa. In 1935, he takes a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of “resident musician” at Queen’s University at Kingston. His duties include giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music is the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen’s. He resigns from St. George’s in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen’s in 1942. During his years in Canada he still pursues the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter’s Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).

On a year’s leave of absence from Queen’s, Harrison studies composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University, also taking courses in musicology with Leo Schrade. In 1946, he takes up a position at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and then moves on to Washington University in St. Louis as head of the new Department of Music (1947–1950).

In 1951, Harrison takes the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and becomes lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–1970) there. In 1965, he is elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. From 1970 to 1980, he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.

Harrison also holds Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–1959), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–1969), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972). He also briefly returns to Queen’s University at Kingston as Queen’s Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and is Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.

Harrison’s honorary titles also include Doctor of Laws at Queen’s University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985). At Queen’s also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) is partly named in his honour.

Harrison dies in Canterbury, England on December 29, 1987.

In 1989, Harry White appreciates Harrison as “an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused.” David F. L. Chadd writes of him “He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries.”

Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Irish Research Council Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.


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Birth of Musicologist Francis Llewellyn Harrison

Francis Llewellyn Harrison, better known as “Frank Harrison” or “Frank Ll. Harrison” and one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist, is born in Dublin on September 29, 1905. Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turns to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.

Harrison is the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May (née Nash). He becomes a chorister at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1912 and is educated at the cathedral grammar school and Mountjoy School. A competent organist, he is deputy organist at St. Patrick’s from 1925 to 1928. In 1920, he also begins musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studies with John Francis Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano). In 1926, he graduates Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and is awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19. He then works in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St. Canice’s Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.

In 1930, Harrison emigrates to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 1933, he studies briefly with Marcel Dupré in France but returns to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa. In 1935, he takes a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of “resident musician” at Queen’s University at Kingston. His duties include giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music is the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen’s. He resigns from St. George’s in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen’s in 1942. During his years in Canada, he still pursues the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter’s Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).

On a year’s leave of absence from Queen’s, Harrison studies composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University, also taking courses in musicology with Leo Schrade. In 1946, he takes up a position at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and then moves on to Washington University in St. Louis as head of the new Department of Music (1947–1950).

In 1951, Harrison takes the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and becomes lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–1970) there. In 1965, he is elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. From 1970 to 1980, he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.

Harrison also holds Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–1959), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–1969), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972). He also briefly returns to Queen’s University at Kingston as Queen’s Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and is Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.

Harrison’s honorary titles also include Doctor of Laws at Queen’s University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985). At Queen’s also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) is partly named in his honour.

Harrison dies in Canterbury, England on December 29, 1987.

In 1989, Harry White appreciates Harrison as “an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused.” David F. L. Chadd writes of him “He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries.”

Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Irish Research Council Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.