Dale The Taoiseach

A Century of Political Leadership
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80075-425-6
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten

Ireland, under both the Irish Free State and after full independence, has now had just over 100 years of autonomous national political leadership. This book, based on Iain Dale's blockbuster podcast, tells the story of Irish politics over the past century by examining the lives and actions of each Irish Taoiseach, from W.T. Cosgrave to Micheál Martin. 15 leading Irish historians, journalists and politicians write essays on each of these figures, showing in the process how Ireland developed from a poor ex-colony to a successful, modern country at the heart of the European Union. In the process, the contributors examine the importance of topics such as the power of the Roman Catholic Church, changing social mores, Ireland's relationship with the UK, and its economic development. This is a must read for anyone interested in Irish politics at a time of potential far-reaching change for the republic.

Iain Dale is an accomplished broadcaster, presenting his own daily radio show on LBC, and several podcasts, including For the Many and Iain Dale All Talk. He is a regular on Question Time, Newsnight, Good Morning Britain, Politics Live and a columnist for the Telegraph. He is the author/editor of more than 40 books, most recently The Presidents and The Prime Ministers. He lives in Tunbridge Wells and Norfolk.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dale, Iain

Leseproben

1

The office of Taoiseach

Eoin O’Malley

Not long before she became UK Prime Minister, the then British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, wished to ‘strongly encourage the Irish tea sock to discuss [the Northern Ireland Protocol] with the EU’. Her mispronunciation of the title Taoiseach was hardly new – for some in Northern Ireland, it is almost a point of principle. Truss’s was no doubt a genuine attempt to pronounce it correctly: many others in her position would merely state the ‘Irish Prime Minister’. The unusual title gives the office a romantic air, a sense of exceptionalism, and suggests an ambiguity about the nature of the office that needs to be decoded. But as much as some find the term unpronounceable, the office is certainly not unusual compared to other European heads of government.

Before adopting the title Taoiseach, Ireland used phrases like ‘Executive Council’ for the government or cabinet and ‘President of the Executive Council’ for the head of the government or Prime Minister. The decision to not use these terms, common in other decolonised countries formerly under British control, might not have been a deliberate rejection of the British practice. The adoption of President for the head of government appears to have been done during Éamon de Valera’s – or Dev’s, as he was known – tour of the USA in an attempt to relate better to US audiences. In fact, the functioning of the cabinet and the role of the President were more similar to the British practice than that of any other European country. The rest of the political system adopted Gaelicised names, such as Dáil Éireann and Oireachtas (parliament), but these too adopted the norms and practices learnt from the Houses of Parliament in London.

It was hardly a surprise, then, in the mid-1930s, when a new constitution was mooted, that the drafters would reconsider the title of the President of the Executive Council. There was a shift to the title ‘Prime Minister’ at this time. The introduction of new Irish titles to the draft English editions of the Constitution was clear in 1936, but still these were direct translations, with An Priomh Aire for Prime Minister and An Leas-Phríomh Aire for Deputy Prime Minister. It was only in the final draft in February 1937 that the titles An Taoiseach and An Tánaiste were introduced. These were then standardised in following (substantially unchanged) copies. Still, in debates on the Constitution, many speakers referred to the proposed office of ‘Prime Minister’.

Given the times, and the suspicion over de Valera’s democratic credentials, there was an assumption that An Taoiseach, which can be translated as ‘The Chief’, was reflective of something like Der Führer in Germany or Il Duce in Italy. It would also have been entirely within the Irish political culture, where mass movements were often sustained by charismatic individuals – Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell – leading personalist political organisations.

The revolutionary period in Ireland from around 1912 to when the state was founded in 1922 had revealed some remarkable leaders and had buried some others. Of those who emerged, most of the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed, and the remaining political leaders all came from the revolutionary tradition. Constitutional nationalists were largely discredited, or at least Irish politics had passed them by. De Valera, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were the clear leaders left on the field as the new state was being formed. De Valera lost out as the Anglo-Irish Treaty was accepted by Dáil Éireann. The deaths in quick succession of Griffith and Collins left W. T. Cosgrave as a third- or even fourth-choice leader for the pro-Treaty side. Cosgrave was not a charismatic leader, and he did not try to be when he took over as the first head of government or President of the Executive Council in the newly independent Ireland. He retained the government team he inherited and in Richard Mulcahy and Kevin O’Higgins had significant colleagues who could rival him for the job.

By comparison, de Valera – commonly addressed as ‘Chief’ well before the title Taoiseach was suggested – was the undisputed leader of his party. Opposition politicians at the time feared Dev had ambitions to concentrate power in the office. But while Dev did see the Taoiseach as a leader of the government, who spoke for and acted for the government as a whole, he did not have totalitarian ambitions, even if he gave the head of government a name that might have connoted these.

In a famous book on the office of Taoiseach, Brian Farrell distinguished between ‘Chairman or Chief’. He argued that some holders of the office were instinctively chairmen and others chiefs. But the analysis of the holders showed that those instinctive chiefs behaved as chairmen. Later holders, such as Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald, who were temperamentally chiefs, were forced by their political circumstances to resign themselves to chairing their governments. Still, the office is often seen as one of the more powerful head-of-government positions in the democratic world. It is usually ranked with the UK and former British colonies such as Canada and Australia in having an exceptionally powerful head of government. We might expect that that power emanates from political institutions: the Constitution and the Department.

The main change that the new constitution proposed in 1937 was that the Taoiseach, unlike the President of the Executive Council, could hire and fire his ministers and could dissolve the Dáil, that is, call an election. The earlier version, the Irish Free State Constitution, did not give these powers to the President. But de Valera appeared to be a ‘chief’ in selecting his cabinet; he did not depend on the Constitution for that power before 1937. The changes made no discernible difference to the way a Taoiseach was selected. Before and after 1937, the Taoiseach was usually the leader of the largest party that could command a majority in Dáil Éireann, either by itself or in coalition with others.

A key question, then, should be whether the power of the Taoiseach stems from the office or do the holders of the office bring a power to the office? When John A. Costello took on the office of Taoiseach, it revealed a great deal of the nature of the office. Costello was not the leader of Fine Gael, the largest party in that government. Nor was he even selected as Taoiseach before the parties had agreed the formation of the government. So, although the Constitution gave him that power, the selection of ministers was something effectively held by party leaders.

In the early iterations of the state, when names and titles were fluid, the Department of Finance was where power lay. This might have been a result of Michael Collins’s energy and focus as a minister building up that department. When he was briefly the chair of the Provisional Government, he both held that office and kept the Finance portfolio. Finance retained this power and centrality to all government decision throughout the history of the state.

By contrast, the Department of the President of the Executive Council, and later the Department of the Taoiseach, was really just a secretariat, a glorified private office for the Taoiseach. The department that supports the Taoiseach is not very large. In 1938, there were about 20 people employed there, excluding messengers and cleaners, 10 of whom were clerical staff. The office provided a coordinating function and kept the Taoiseach abreast of the activities of all the departments and their ministers, but it did not control them. The coordination function was primarily and legally held through the operation of cabinet meetings. The Department of the Taoiseach, then, was the ‘post office’ that took in information for cabinet to consider and sent out decisions once taken.

The Secretary to the Department was also Secretary to the Government, and one holder took pride that he was there to serve the government as a whole and not an individual Taoiseach. Any new issues not already assigned a department automatically ended up in the Department of the Taoiseach, and Taoisigh could assign themselves any issue they wanted to. Still, most ministers saw the Taoiseach as a consensual, coordinating figure rather than a dominating one. The Taoiseach consulted and advised ministers but did not direct them.

Even though a story has Seán Lemass explaining Dev’s power to a British minister that if Dev was in a minority in cabinet, ‘the cabinet then takes its decision by a minority of one’, this was true of ‘chiefs’ like de Valera as well as the less obviously dominant Taoisigh. Dev did not always get his way, and Lemass was much more forceful in contrast to de Valera, who tended to proceed at the pace of the slowest man.

If one of a Taoiseach’s roles is to facilitate government decisions, they also have to lead a party in parliament and in the country, to maintain the confidence of the Dáil by holding the party together. This might have seemed easy: government Teachtaí Dála (TDs) – members of the Dáil – rarely if ever rebelled. It was not necessary to be a great orator to hold your government together: indeed, none of the holders of the office can be identified as exceptional public speakers. This might also have been because of the conservative nature of the political leaders. But this was hardly true of Lemass, who introduced some radical changes of policy in the 1960s in spite of scepticism within his party. His position as a leader...