The Reluctant Taoiseach

by David McCullagh

  Predictably, the tribunal report was satisfactory for the Government. While it found that the programme-makers honestly believed that moneylending was widespread and violent, it said they failed to adequately check out sources. “The programme was found not to be authentic either in relation to the scale of the illegal money lending or in relation to associated violence.”197 The Attorney General, Colm Condon, subsequently rejected a recommendation from the Chief State Solicitor that the State should pay £7,500 of the “Seven Days” legal costs (it was recommended that RTÉ should be paid £13,500). Condon could “see no reason why any sum should be paid by the State in relation to the Seven Days team, nor did I at any stage see any reason why they should have been thought to require separate representation”.198

  In 1973, as the prospect of a new coalition between Fine Gael and Labour emerged and then became a reality, Costello’s views were sought by the media. Like him, Liam Cosgrave found himself at the head of a coalition government after 16 years of Fianna Fáil rule. Costello said coalitions could be just as stable as single-party governments “provided you have good will and provided you have people … of integrity and of courage and of persistent hope and belief in the country”. Asked if he thought Cosgrave faced any real problems, he replied in typically direct fashion, “I do not.”199 In particular, he pointed out that Cosgrave only had to worry about two parties, and “to that extent his difficulties are enormously lessened from what I had to face in both Cabinets”.200

  However, while he was supportive of the new government, he was annoyed that Declan, after his contribution to the party over the years, was appointed Attorney General rather than being made a minister. The appointment was regarded by the liberal wing of Fine Gael as an attempt to contain his influence.201 Declan Costello was disappointed; Jack Costello was furious. The younger Alexis FitzGerald, walking towards Leinster House, was offered a lift in the former Taoiseach’s official car. On asking Costello how he was, he was told, “Terrible. Did you hear what they’re making Declan?”202 He also made his displeasure known to his friend Muiris Mac Conghail, who had been appointed Government Press Secretary by Cosgrave.203

  By now he was not just a grandfather, but a great-grandfather. His great-granddaughter, Katie Armstrong, remembers a Ladybird book about puppies and kittens which he gave her. Her brother, Frank, was brought at six weeks old to meet his great-grandfather shortly before Costello died.204

  As he got older, Costello had the usual run of illnesses, including a bad case of shingles in 1966.205 But given his lifelong addiction to nicotine, his health was relatively robust. Eventually, he gave up smoking cigarettes and took up “evil-smelling” cheroots instead.206 The cheroots may not have been quite as dangerous, but long-term smoking generally only has one result. Around the middle of 1975 he became ill. What was originally thought to be a chest infection turned out to be lung cancer.207 During the summer law vacation he began to fail rapidly. At the Mass in St Michan’s opening the Autumn Law Term that year many colleagues, shocked at his appearance, asked his Garda driver what was wrong with him.208

  He went to Cork on circuit for the last time in October 1975—it was more of a token visit, as he didn’t have much work on. While his visits to the Law Library became less frequent, he continued going to Mass in Donnybrook every day. Towards the end, he had to be helped up to Communion by one of his drivers.209 He approached illness with his customary determination, insisting on coming down the stairs for breakfast no matter how ill he felt, with the help of his housekeeper Molly Ennis. Her devotion at this time was credited by some in the family for keeping him going.210

  (Outside of family, she was the biggest beneficiary of his will, receiving a bequest of £1,000, as well as being allowed to live in the house in Herbert Park until she secured a new position. The will, drawn up in February 1975, also remembered his two drivers, various nieces and nephews, the Saint Vincent de Paul and the Bar Benevolent Society, all of whom received £100 each. Ita McCoy was left £500, and Costello’s typewriter. The remainder of his estate, which was valued at £90,564.74 (just under €700,000 at 2010 prices)211, was divided into five, one part each for Declan, John and Eavan, one fifth held in trust for Wilfrid, and the final fifth divided among Grace’s children.212)

  His final illness was well known in legal circles. When Frederick Budd retired from the Supreme Court just before Christmas, he “expressed regret that his old colleague, Mr John A. Costello SC, was unable to be present and he wished him a speedy recovery to good health”.213 The end came suddenly. He was visited by the senior curate of Donnybrook parish on the evening of 5 January. There was no particular anxiety about his condition at the time, but the priest asked him if he would like to receive Holy Communion. “There is nothing that I would wish for better,” Costello replied. One hour after receiving Communion, he was dead.214

  There were many tributes. The Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, described him as “a true Christian gentleman”; Garret FitzGerald, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, said he was “unique in his loyalty, his vigour, his candour and his uncompromising honesty”; Tom Finlay, President of the High Court, said “he set in effect the standards of integrity and conduct for the Irish Bar probably for the last forty years or more”.215 British Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote to Cosgrave recalling his contacts with Costello, most recently sitting beside him at a lunch in Dublin. “I know of the high respect in which he was held in the Irish Republic and among Irishmen everywhere, both as an eminent constitutional lawyer and as an upright and humane statesman and patriot.” US President Gerald Ford said Americans would remember Costello “as a man of peace, as a statesman, and as a man dedicated to the rule of law”.216

  As a former Taoiseach, Costello was entitled to a State funeral, but the family declined the offer. It was, as an editorial in the Irish Independent pointed out, “entirely in keeping with the outlook of the late Mr John A. Costello … In his private, political and legal life he was always the retiring man who never sought, although he often found himself in, the limelight.”217 The church in Donnybrook was packed for the funeral. A minor protocol problem arose because ministers were seated before members of the Diplomatic Corps, but a commonsense solution was found by mixing diplomats and members of the Government in the first four rows.218 It was not, of course, the first time that Costello had ruffled diplomatic feathers. The homily was delivered by the parish priest, Bishop Joseph Carroll,219 who paid tribute to Costello as a parishioner, as someone with an “unusually strong” sense of belonging to the parish community. “One of the most moving of our experiences here in the parish during the last few months, when his health began to fail seriously, was to see this distinguished man, so humbly making his way, with considerable difficulty, to the altar rails to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion.”220

  A week after his death, the legal profession paid its own tribute at the opening of the Hilary law term. The Supreme Court was crowded with judges, barristers and solicitors, the judges of the High as well as the Supreme Court assembled on the bench, and the Attorney General, Declan Costello, taking his place as leader of the Bar. The Chief Justice, Tom O’Higgins, a former Cabinet colleague of John A. Costello, said that many tributes had been paid over the past week to their former colleague; this was an opportunity to salute him as a barrister. He said Costello had in abundance the skills needed by a barrister—not only knowledge but wisdom and experience, not only rhetoric and skill but shrewdness, not only a quickness to appreciate facts but also a patience to discover the essential detail.

  O’Higgins continued, “But he brought more—in addition to his natural talents and immense abilities went a sense of honour and an integrity which was unrivalled, an unassuming simplicity which caused him to shun the plaudits which his prowess evoked and in those cases where he felt that his client had been harshly treated or unfairly put upon, such a burning searing conviction of what ought to be or have been, that all opposition tended to crumble and disintegrate. He had no second best. F
or those for whom he appeared—the highest or the lowest in the land, those with vast riches and those with no means whatsoever—there was only one quality of service which he could give and that was the best he had it in him to give … In this long period at the Irish Bar … despite the demands of an enormous practice, despite the multiple other activities in which he was engaged, John Costello remained, essentially, unassuming and approachable—one to whose seat in the library any colleague could go knowing that he would get not only valued advice but also kindness, consideration and respect.”

  One of those colleagues spoke next. Francis Murphy, chairman of the Bar Council, paid a heartfelt tribute to Costello’s devotion to the profession. “Of him, as a man and as a barrister, truly it could be said that he fought the good fight and … by any standard by which he may be judged, it was agreed that not only did he fight the good fight but that he won.”221

  Chapter 15

  MEASURING UP

  “Possibly I’ll get about two lines in … history if I’m referred to at all.”1

  JOHN A. COSTELLO, DECEMBER 1969

  “The Taoiseach was indeed very much a dark horse upon his entry into the highest office of State”.2

  THE LEADER, FEBRUARY 1951

  John A. Costello had no great illusions about his place in history. At the presentation evening to mark his retirement from politics, he spoke of himself as “small fry” compared to people like Seán MacEoin, Richard Mulcahy, Kevin O’Higgins, and Patrick McGilligan. Their names, he said, would be “written into the pages of Irish history … in bright letters and letters of gold. Possibly I’ll get about two lines in that same history if I’m referred to at all.”3

  His audience laughed at this suggestion, but in fact it wasn’t too far off the mark. A quick scan of the index of most books dealing with the history of twentieth-century Ireland will show that the third man to head an independent Irish government is mentioned relatively briefly—if he’s mentioned at all. It is perhaps significant that three of the ministers in his first Cabinet—James Dillon, Seán MacBride and Noël Browne4—were the subject of full-length biographies long before Costello himself. A postage stamp marking the centenary of his birth in 1991 is about the only official memorial he has received.5

  Part of the reason may lie in Costello’s own modesty, which appears to have been absolutely genuine. The nature of his appointment, as the least objectionable candidate to head the First Inter-party Government, and his evident reluctance to take the job may also have lessened his historical stature in many eyes. As Noel Hartnett observed in 1959, “There is no ‘mystique’ about John A. Costello … He was never called the ‘Leader’ or any such grandiloquent title … Costello is a simple, unsubtle man who has avoided arousing enmity in any of his opponents, even the most mean-minded.”6

  His personal qualities were of course the main reason why he became Taoiseach in 1948. Costello was trusted, and liked, by the other parties, and his diplomatic chairing of government was regarded as the main reason they were able to stay together.7 By agreeing to become Taoiseach, Costello made the First Inter-party Government possible; by his conduct as Taoiseach he did more than anyone to make it work. That must rank as a very significant achievement.

  That government set a template for politics in the following four decades; it was Fianna Fáil versus the rest. That dynamic, as well as the fact of getting into government in 1948, rescued Fine Gael from a slide to oblivion. After 16 years in the wilderness, the party was relevant again. Of course, a further 16 years on the opposition benches followed Costello’s second government, but at least the possibility of coalition at some stage was on the horizon, and the party never again plumbed the electoral depths of 1948, when it received less than 20 per cent of the vote.

  Costello did more than give Fine Gael a taste of power; he fundamentally changed its political direction as well. In 1948, the party was seen as very conservative indeed. That image changed over the following three and a half years, partly through coalition with Labour and Clann na Poblachta, but more fundamentally because of the economic ideas pursued by the Taoiseach. The most obvious sign of this was the introduction of the Capital Budget. As The Leader noted in 1951, “Mr Costello … has introduced a fundamental change of policy and has for some time been steadily moving towards a radically new programme … he has effected a minor revolution in the upper levels of the party.”8

  He also presented a more accessible face to the public than the somewhat austere Richard Mulcahy. Saving Fine Gael may well have been Costello’s most significant political achievement between 1948 and 1951, but of course his first term as Taoiseach is better remembered for two controversial episodes: the declaration of the Republic and the Mother and Child crisis. Hopefully, this book has shown that both developments were more complex than is sometimes thought.

  Contrary to popular myth, John A. Costello did not declare Ireland a Republic in a fit of temper while he was in Canada. However, he did confirm the truth of a report that his government intended to repeal the External Relations Act. His decision to do so was unwise, unnecessary and almost certainly prompted by annoyance. The wiser course would have been to stonewall—something he would have had no difficulty in doing. In the end, the whole affair worked out all right from the Irish point of view, but this was due to accident rather than design. Had it been otherwise Costello would have had to shoulder most of the blame.

  The story about making a rash announcement while in a fury was believed because Costello was widely—and rightly—seen as a man with a temper. Ken Whitaker remarked that “he had a fieryness of spirit which he sometimes didn’t control fully”. Whitaker remembered there was a dynamism to him, but an impatience, a brusqueness and a dogmatic streak too.9 In a letter to his friend John Burke in 1944, Costello wrote that “though I am emotionally somewhat tongue-tied I have a deep and abiding feeling of friendship and gratitude for you”.10 In fact, Costello was anything but “tongue-tied” emotionally; his emotions were very close to the surface, in politics and in life. This was seen in his temper, in his enduring loyalty to his friends, in his charity, and also in his tendency to read too much into gestures of courtesy, whether from Mackenzie King in 1948 or from Eisenhower and Nixon in 1956.

  In the second great controversy of his first government, the Mother and Child crisis, the Taoiseach’s behaviour, while overly obsequious to the Church in general and to Archbishop McQuaid in particular, seems to have been motivated by genuine concern about possible State control of medicine. He did his best to reach a compromise between the doctors and his young and inexperienced colleague Noël Browne. When this proved impossible, he attempted to reduce the threat to his government by using the Church to neutralise Browne. With any other politician, this probably would have worked. The failure of the stratagem put Costello on the wrong side of history, though this wasn’t clear at the time. It is, of course, dangerous to judge Costello’s attitude to the Church by the standards of today. As Tom Garvin succinctly put it, “the Irish democratic political process was heavily tinged with theocracy, for the overwhelming reason that the majority wished it to be that way”.11 On this question, John A. Costello was most certainly with the majority in Irish society.

  His second period as Taoiseach was less successful than his first. Niamh Puirséil has suggested that the Second Inter-party Government “is a contender for the worst administration in the history of the state …”12 Perhaps, although there is stiff competition from the Fianna Fáil government which preceded it, and from any of the governments in the decade after 1977 (it is too early to reach a conclusion about more recent administrations).

  The defining characteristic of the Second Inter-party Government was the curious torpor that seemed to grip it. Very little was done until economic crisis and the IRA Border Campaign forced it to act. Liam Cosgrave noted that there was “less nonsense talked with MacBride and Browne missing”.13 This was, no doubt, true; but their absence also removed the radical cutting edge which made the Firs
t Inter-party Government so unpredictable and so interesting.

  The main charge which can be levelled against Costello is the failure to act sooner on the economic agenda which eventually led Ireland out of the dark days of the 1950s—policies which he knew were needed, such as the abolition of the restrictions on foreign investment, the shift towards more productive capital spending, and a greater concentration on exports.

  However, while he was slow to move, he did move in the end, and his October 1956 Policy for Production was an important step on the road to a new economic dispensation in Ireland. The tax relief for extra exports signalled in the speech and introduced two months later was of major importance, as was the stated intention to attract more foreign investment, which implied the final demise of protection and the opening of the Irish economy to free trade. These were significant developments for which he was to get little credit, because he had hesitated too long and lost power before the new ideas could take effect.

  Two things might be said in his defence. Firstly, we have seen at other times of economic crisis that drastic medicine only becomes acceptable when the depths have been plumbed—this was evident in the 1980s, when measures were introduced after 1987 that would have been unthinkable before. The same dynamic has been seen in more recent times, with Budget 2010 cutting social welfare rates and public service pay, developments that would have been impossible six months previously. Secondly, Jack Costello was not the only one to hesitate before pushing for change. Seán Lemass showed similar hesitation.14 At least when Lemass returned to office and pursued a new course, he knew that Fine Gael was committed to very similar policies and would not oppose him.