The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian

by Pat Walsh

  … The minister for his part is advised that upon him rests the statutory duty of ensuring that due effect is given to the recommendation of the Local Appointments Commissioners. Since the inception of the act nearly 1,000 recommendations have been made by the Appointments Commissioners, and in all cases the local authority concerned has appointed the person recommended where such person was willing to accept the appointment.

  … The recommendation of the Local Appointments Commissioners was made over four months ago, and the delay which has already occurred in appointing Miss Dunbar to the position to which she is legally entitled is unreasonable. Apart from that consideration, members of the council are placing themselves needlessly in the invidious position of assuming personal pecuniary responsibilities.

  … In all other respects the County Council since election have administered faithfully the laws of the Oireachtas. For that reason and because, as already indicated, of the possibility that some doubt remains as to the true facts, the minister considers the council are entitled to a further opportunity of considering the matter. I am accordingly to say that a final decision will not be taken until 1 January …11

  Now that the government had received the anticipated report from the inspector the next move was to give Mayo County Council an opportunity to change its stance. Using the excuse of a letter written by Canon Hegarty, which called into question Miss Dunbar Harrison’s eligibility on the grounds of age and experience, the department gave the Council one last opportunity to reconsider. The fact that Miss Dunbar Harrison had been born in February 1906 and was under the twenty-five-year age requirement was yet another revelation calling into question her appointment.12

  Chairman Michael Davis refused to have anything to do with the convening of a special meeting, so the county secretary, M.J. Egan, took it upon himself to organise it. Canon Hegarty’s letter seems little more than a pretext, which served to get the matter back on the agenda despite the fact that the council had already met and voted on it. The following notice was issued to each member of the County Council by M.J. Egan:

  You are hereby summoned to attend a special meeting of the Mayo County Council to be held in the Council Chamber, Courthouse, Castlebar, at the hour of one o’clock p.m., on Saturday, 27 December 1930, to consider communication from the Minister for Local Government and public health in regard to the council’s refusal to appoint Miss Dunbar as county librarian, and to consider their former decision on the matter in light of the facts set out in the minister’s letter.13

  The meeting was arranged for Saturday, 27 December, just days before the government’s self-declared deadline of 1 January. As the Leitrim Observer asked, ‘Is it the olive branch?’ The paper went on to declare that ‘Mayo was always a model loyal body, and never flung the glove to the department until the present situation arose.’14 It could be argued that the councillors weren’t being offered much of an olive branch if at the same time they were being reminded of their ‘personal pecuniary responsibilities’.

  The government had let it be known, by every means possible, that they were absolutely determined to abolish the council if it did not change its mind and accept Letitia Dunbar Harrison as county librarian. Nevertheless the ball was back in the council’s court and it was up to them to make the next move.

  Notes

  1.Western People, 20 December 1930, p.3.

  2.The Connaught Telegraph, 20 December 1930, p.5.

  3.Western People, 20 December 1930, p.3.

  4.The Connaught Telegraph, 20 December 1930, p.5.

  5.Mayo News, 20 December 1930, p.5.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Dáil Debates, 1 March 1922.

  8.Mary E. Daly, The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment p. 99.

  9.Mayo News, 20 December 1930, p.5.

  10.Leitrim Observer, 20 December 1930, p.1.

  11.Irish Independent, 22 December 1930, p.6.

  12.Ibid., 24 December 1930, p.8.

  13.The Connaught Telegraph, 27 December 1930, p.5.

  14.Leitrim Observer, 27 December 1930, p.4.

  Chapter 5

  ‘They will boycott your funeral’

  It could be argued that all of the actions taken by the government during the Mayo affair were as much to defend the Local Appointments Commission as they were to protect the rights of Miss Letitia Dunbar Harrison. The Commission was a newly established body and this was the first time that a County Council had seriously questioned one of its job recommendations.

  The LAC was a central agency that had been set up to provide independent assessment of recruitment to local bodies and thereby combat favouritism, nepotism and political patronage. Candidates were to be judged on their professional merits, rather than their connections. There had been a general feeling, ‘amounting almost to a tradition, that local councils could not be trusted to fill jobs fairly.’1 Canvassing and dishonesty were widely suspected. Arthur Griffith had long planned for a centralised recruitment system for both public and civil service jobs. This had been the policy of the Sinn Féin Party from which Cumann na nGaedheal had emerged.

  There are many examples from the early years of the twentieth century, of local bodies selecting patently unsuitable candidates ahead of better-qualified applicants. Given the lack of central control, it comes as little surprise that canvassing and nepotism were rife. Libraries proved no exception to the opportunity for local duplicity.

  One well-known case occurred in Limerick. As one library historian put it, ‘It was not only in small towns that such jobbery and corruption took place. A disgraceful case of favouritism was the appointment of James McNamara as the first librarian of Limerick library.’2 Andrew Carnegie had given the city the substantial sum of £7,000 with which to build a new library. A museum was also incorporated into the planned building. In May 1906 Limerick Corporation advertised for the joint post of museum curator and director of the library. The salary was set at £110 a year with the added perk of a residence in a house adjacent to the library. Seventeen applications were received. This was reduced to a short list of four.

  It was resolved to hold a written examination to decide between the remaining contestants. Even at this early stage one of the four candidates suspected foul play. He ‘did not offer himself because he believed no matter what his qualifications might be the result was a foregone conclusion.’3

  A level of Irish ‘up to the standard of the pass degree of the Royal University’ was a requirement for the job. A written as well as an oral test in Irish was held for the three candidates who presented themselves. The other written papers were in Irish history and antiquities, bibliography (knowledge of books) and freehand drawing. The Cork Examiner stated of one candidate that he ‘has to all appearance no grip of the subject. He, therefore, I take it, does not come into consideration at all.’ However, that was not the way it worked out. This particular candidate, a Mr James McNamara, despite failing to qualify in written Irish, oral Irish or bibliography (in which test he received the princely sum of zero marks), was selected for the post.

  The employment of James McNamara was not without opposition. He was chosen only on the casting vote of the chairman of the library committee. In the initial vote taken, Mr McNamara and Mr Thomas Stephens, who was the only candidate to qualify in all the subjects, each received twenty-eight votes.4 Both candidates were local, but James McNamara seems to have been better connected.

  Job selection in this manner became little more than a popularity contest. Local politicians, due to the fact that they themselves depended on votes, were particularly susceptible to local lobbying. The case in Limerick is perhaps only unusual in that the bias was so blatant. This was just one example of what could happen at a local level. It was widely believed that who you knew was more important than what you knew when it came to getting a job with a local council. As Jasper Wolfe, TD, put it, ‘When I was a member of a public board – it is a shame for me, I suppose, to have to confess it, but we all know the
facts – I, like the other members voted for the man I knew best or for the candidate whose friends I knew best, but I never voted for a relative. I did like everybody else. It was the common custom. We all held it to be our duty to vote for the candidate we knew best or whose friends we knew best.’5 It was the intention of the Cumann na nGaedheal government to regularise such appointments by standardising the employment procedures. They did this by setting up an independent body to oversee the recruitment process.

  In 1926 the Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Act was drawn up to implement this centralised recruitment policy. One of its first steps was to establish the Local Appointments Commission which was given the power to select and recommend persons for appointment to principal posts in local authorities; the categories specified were chief executive officers and technical and professional posts. County librarian posts were among those covered by the act. Local authorities were bound to appoint the candidate recommended.

  As the minister moving the bill in the Dáil, James Burke, put it: ‘Charges of nepotism and corruption have occasionally been made against local authorities. We are, unfortunately, in the posi-

  tion where we are able to confirm those charges, and while I do not say that either corruption or nepotism is carried out on any great scale in appointments made by local authorities, at the present time, yet there is some foundation for the statement. But even if there was no foundation for such a statement, it is undoubtedly true that the best representatives of local authorities object very much to the continual canvassing that goes on with regard to appointments by local authorities, and they would be very glad, as we are glad, to be divested of all patronage with regard to these appointments.’6

  Fianna Fáil did not take up their seats in the Dáil in 1926 so it was left to the Labour Party and the Farmers’ Party to act as the opposition. They had serious reservations about the proposed legislation. While they may have felt that there was a problem, the measure proposed by Cumann na nGaedheal was seen as too drastic a curtailment of local democracy. As Deputy Pádraig Baxter pointed out, the passing of this act would result in a complete change in the procedure for making professional appointments to local authorities. ‘If we pass this measure,’ he said, ‘the Commission will make the appointment, to be sanctioned by the minister … the local authorities will not have one word or one voice in that.’7

  As a possible compromise it was suggested that the Commission should pass on a short list of successful candidates in order of merit, from which the local authorities might then make their selection. Many deputies opposed the principle of the bill on the grounds that it stripped local authorities of one of its few remaining powers. Tom Johnson of the Labour Party was one of those. ‘I think the minister is moving very rapidly,’ he said, ‘in the direction of making membership of a local authority so mean and petty an office as only to attract the meanest and pettiest minds in the country.’8

  The Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe, defended the proposal stating: ‘People who desire appointments will, in the main, be pleased with it, because those who are defeated will be satisfied if somebody better than themselves gets the appointment, and it will be in the interests of the ratepayers. I think that we should not pay any attention to the kind of outcry that will arise from people who like to exercise patronage. There are always people who are pulling strings, and there are people who pulled strings in the past.’

  ‘And in the minister’s constituency particularly,’ interjected Deputy Baxter.9

  ‘An orgy of jobbery’

  Minister for Justice, Kevin O’Higgins, declared, ‘The fact is that up and down the country members of public bodies, members of farmers’ unions, and members of other organisations have been talking of an orgy of jobbery and about appointments to the public service on grounds other than a man’s capacity to perform the particular function assigned to him.’ O’Higgins got to the heart of the debate, ‘On this question as to who performs the formal act of appointment, if the appointment is to be automatic on the recommendation of the tribunal, does it matter in whom it lies? … The reason for prescribing in the bill that that act shall be performed by the minister is … that where a name is sent down, which is not the name that was desired by a majority of a particular local body, you are courting the position that they will refrain from making a particular appointment, and you do not want simply to court that kind of clash to secure that where the appointment is duly made, you would almost have to dissolve the local body and appoint a commissioner.’10

  Deputy Louis D’Alton disagreed with the thrust of the bill. ‘These representatives on public bodies,’ he said, ‘have been appointed by the people as custodians of their affairs. But they are to be told that they cannot be trusted unless they are under the direction of a mastermind that can say, “You can go so far but not further.” In this matter the minister is simply putting a pitchfork before the tide. If there are boards in Ireland that do not do their duty it is for the people to get rid of their representatives on these boards.’

  Deputy Gorey was of a similar opinion. ‘What object have we now,’ he asked, ‘in calling this department the Local Government Department, or calling the minister, Minister for Local Government? It is the Department of Central Government and he is Minister for Central Government. Local authority and local jurisdiction is gone. Under the bill every vestige of what was local authority resides now with the minister. Not a single appointment can be made, not even a roadmaker or a stonebreaker can be appointed by the local authorities.’11

  Deputy Patrick J. Egan was strongly in favour of the bill. ‘Public representatives,’ he said, ‘are assailed from all directions in connection with these appointments. If you do not vote for the relatives of your friends on a council they will boycott your funeral.’12

  Following a number of amendments, listing certain exceptions among middle- and lower-level posts that would be excluded from the Commission’s remit, the act passed through the Dáil. Two years later, following two general elections and the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins, Fianna Fáil dropped its abstentionist policy and took its place in the Dáil as the biggest opposition party. In 1928 Eamon de Valera sponsored a private members’ bill to curtail the powers of the Local Appointments Commission, ‘the chief one being that where the act provides for sending down the name of one person, it shall be discretionary for local bodies to ask that instead of a single name being sent down to them for an appointment, a panel of names be sent to them.’13

  Unsurprisingly, Cumann na nGaedheal opposed the bill. President Cosgrave was insisted that their act ‘was introduced for one main purpose and that was to secure in the appointment of officials of local authorities the very best qualified persons for each post vacant … what is the purpose of sending down more than one name except to invite the local authority to appoint someone other than the best? … What about the poor man’s son? What about the rights of democracy if there is not some premium for talent and capacity to fill these offices?’14

  ‘The shortest cut from Knockna-Skeherooh to Mowamanahan’

  Deputy Hennessy was also sceptical of the value of sending down three names. ‘I have heard something about local experience,’ he said. ‘I do not know what that means … I believe that the interpretation of “local man” is one who knows the shortest cut from Knockna-Skeherooh to Mowamanahan in the Knockmealdown Mountains.’ During the debate that followed Richard Mulcahy stated, ‘In order to clear the air I want to say that the Local Government Department, and the present executive, are not going to accept for consideration a suggestion from any public body, or from any other body, no matter who, that there should be discrimination in matters of religion in the making of appointments, either under the central government or under local authorities.’15

  Seán Lemass alleged, ‘I know men and I do not want to produce their names in this house, who were appointed as dispensary doctors by the Local Appointments Commissioners and who have not been sober since the day they were
appointed.’16

  Deputy Gorey alleged that ‘whether it was the peculiar atmosphere of the Shannon mud that was responsible for it or not, I do not know, but so it was anyhow. Before the war, when money was not as plenty as it was later on, it took £750 to £800 to get a doctor elected in Limerick. Anybody who had not that amount was out of it. That was supposed to be the market price at the time.’17

  The Fianna Fáil bill was defeated, but later in 1928, on foot of an undertaking that had been given during the debate by President Cosgrave to Deputy T.J. O’Connell of the Labour Party, a select committee of the Dáil was set up to inquire into the workings of the LAC. The committee circularised the 249 local bodies in the Free State, asking them to submit in writing any representations they wished to make. Of these, 132 chose not to reply. Of the remaining 117, a total of 7 expressed satisfaction, 23 were opposed on principle, 20 had no observations to make and 67 suggested various improvements.18

  The committee’s report was seen as generally favourable of the LAC. The act responsible for setting up the LAC was undoubtedly well intentioned but it was perhaps a flawed piece of legislation and the only surprise might have been that it was over four years before a local authority mounted a serious challenge to it.

  Notes

  1.Desmond Roche, Local Government in Ireland, p. 53.

  2.Brendan Grimes, Irish Carnegie Libraries, p.54.

  3.‘The Limerick New Public Library and Museum’, An Leabharlann, March 1907, vol. ii, no. 2, p.141.

  4.Ibid., pp. 123-143.

  5.Dáil Debates, 8 June 1928.

  6.Ibid., 19 May 1926.

  7.Ibid.