by Noël Browne
It was my custom to leave a chocolate biscuit under the pillow of each of our daughters when I returned late each night. Frequently, because of school on their part, or my early departure, I might not see them throughout the whole of that day, or possibly even during that week. The chocolate biscuit was no substitute for a conscientious parent, nor was their mother’s reassurance that ‘Noëlie is out building hospitals for sick people’. With a predictable five-day week at Newcastle, we had forged a timetable within which I could play my role as medical officer, husband and father. That harmonious interplay of a stable two-parent home, so important in the maturation process of our two daughters Ruth (born in 1945) and Susan (born in 1949), came to an abrupt end.
It was considered politically wise, that, as Minister for Health, I should vacate the small lodge in which we lived at the hospital. Thereafter, during my three-year period as Minister, we were to change our rented homes five times. Ruth and Susan’s hitherto sheltered life was irreparably shattered. There were enormous mental and physical demands on my wife, forced to organise these periodic moves on her own. For the children, there were no more seaside visits, walks and talks in the woods, picnics, swimming in the Wicklow streams. Overnight, their father had gone, had disappeared. In this aspect of their lives all politicians make considerable unrecognised sacrifices for the sake of the public, frequently at the expense of their own families.
There were also financial implications. At that time, ministerial salaries were absurdly inadequate, based on the old convention of British parliamentary government when politicians were propertied gentlemen with private means. A minister was paid less than his departmental secretary. Added to this was the peculiar dispensation imposed on a Clann na Poblachta minister, because of MacBride’s belief that a minister should contribute the ministerial part of his salary to party funds. It was a measure of his ignorance of the even greater financial and social demands on a minister over those of a deputy, heavy though these are. Since I had leave of absence from my hospital work, we were totally dependent on my Dáil salary. Far from being highly paid it was during my period as minister that, as a family, we contracted unavoidable debts from which we were freed only twenty years later, when deputies and ministers were properly paid.
It was believed that there had been widespread abuse of ministerial cars by our predecessors; Paddy Smith was said to have brought his calves to the fair for sale in his ministerial car. A Clann na Poblachta minister was expected to use his ministerial car exclusively for government business. This entailed greatly increased physical and financial demands on us. It was even further increased because we had the whole country to cover and there were only two of us. I was constantly on the road, driving myself to the four corners of Ireland for party political reasons.
I recall a long, dangerous and stressful drive in the unreliable open car we then owned, all the way from Dublin to the top-most point of Donegal. The phrase used by local party workers, ‘over the Gweebarra Bridge’ is still engraved on my heart. Our journey was made in order to fight the Neil Blaney by-election, caused by the death of his father. After a hard weekend of chapel gate meetings, we travelled back from Donegal to Dublin. There was snow on the Curlew Mountains. Because I was the only driver who could see at all where we were going, with the windscreen lying flat on the car bonnet, I was chosen to lead the way home during the worst part of the cold, wet, wintry night of wind, rain and fog. Even if I did not suffer the dangerous threat of tuberculosis, how could a minister carry on his difficult job throughout the following week after a weekend of such activity?
Becoming and having been a minister can distort the personality of the man or woman who is unwary. For instance, beware of becoming pompous and vain; it does happen. Ministerial protocol demands, and I never failed to find it embarrassing, that a senior civil servant, such as Mr Kennedy, would feel bound to stand by my side, as I signed important law-enforcing documents which would alter the lives of our fellow citizens. Mr Kennedy’s job was merely to blot my signature. This distinguished civil servant, it appears, must address me neither as ‘Mr’, ‘Deputy’, ‘Doctor,’ or even the democratic ‘Noël’, but only as ‘Minister’. The word was hissed out with the kind of reverence which the Chinese reserve for their aged.
Happily for me, there were antidotes to this heady sense of delirious intoxication. Other than the damaged ego that follows return to one’s usually commonplace civilian ordinariness, the ill effect rarely survived the experience. Yet, sure that within myself I had not changed in any way, I wondered at the servile transformation of so many, when it was they who had honoured me. Does society unconsciously promote such pomposity and inflated self importance among a chosen few, so that in time, whimsically, humpty-dumpty-like it may destroy it?
There is an incongruous aid to this process of exclusivism, the mean and unimaginative substitute republican ‘magic’ devised to replace that of the old British raj. It takes the form of a purposeless, to me at any rate, ‘laying on of hands’ ritual ar Áras an Uachtaráin. In spite of our new republican status, in the absence of a sovereign monarch our seals of office were formally bestowed on us by the President. Having been studied by each of us for a matter of seconds, the seals were then demanded back by the President, Seán T. O’Kelly. Even an all-Ireland finalist gets a permanent memento of his momentary glory!
I had never even been to see parliament in action. A few days before the opening of the Dáil it fell to the Deputy Secretary, Paddy Murray, to bring me over to Leinster House and, in the privacy of the empty Dáil chamber, explain briefly parliamentary procedures. ‘This is where the government sits, over here the opposition . . . Here sits the Ceann Comhairle. This is where the journalists sit . . . Your civil servants will sit here, so as to be of help to you.’ In a brief half-hour visit, I had to absorb the complex protocol of parliamentary debate that later I came to know so well.
Initially, the most worrying aspect of my job as Minister was Question Time. With the exception of the incorrigible Seán MacEntee, deputies of all parties showed an unusual restraint in deference to my newness to the job. For MacEntee, it was war to the death from the beginning. On one occasion a question was mischievously submitted to me in Irish by a Gaelic-speaking deputy, Gerald Bartley from Connemara. Bartley well knew that because of my mainly English education I had no Irish. (Mr Kennedy had to translate even the two words ‘Aire Sláinte’ on the first occasion I signed a legal document for him as Minister for Health.) The Fianna Fáil party wished to establish Mr MacEntee’s thesis that I was a ‘piece of flotsam’, and an uncaring anglophile West Briton.
I decided to take a risk. Mr Kennedy, a fluent Gaelic speaker, translated the parliamentary question for me into English and then translated my reply into Irish. He kindly tutored me in the phonetic version of the reply. On the day, miserable with fear, I presented myself in the Dáil Chamber. Having replied to a number of questions in English, difficult enough in themselves, I came to Gerald Bartley’s question in Irish. Collecting whatever nerve is conjured up by us on these occasions I spoke my reply in phonetic Irish to a silent and surprised Dáil chamber. I then sat down. To his credit and my intense relief Bartley made no attempt to show up my ignorance. He asked no supplementaries.
In deference to the fact that a good number of our people at that time spoke Irish, and as a courtesy to them should they wish to speak to me in that form, I set out to learn the language. Here I was fortunate to have the willing help of Seosaph O Cadhain from Connemara. Seosaph attended three days a week at the Department of Health or at any convenient venue to both of us, sometimes at his home in Crumlin. I spent whatever free weekends I had in Connemara with him. There I met another distinguished Gaelic scholar, Seán O Conghaile of Cnoc. During my many weekends in Connemara, and later on all our family vacations there, we lived with Seán and his hospitable wife Máire. Not alone did I learn to speak the language but, since Seán’s father was still living, I was privileged to encounter the unique ambience of our
ancient ethos and culture. Lamentably this culture has now become virtually extinguished.
To speak the language became one of my most powerful private ambitions. It was then that with my wife Phyllis and our two daughters I came to know Connemara and its people. We have made it our chosen home before anywhere else we know. It is sad that as a nation we have abandoned hope that our people will now ever speak their own language. The language revival was bound up with national prosperity. An intelligent parent, at least one out of three of whose children must emigrate to England, could not be unduly concerned about learning a language which for them would become an unspoken language in the country of their adoption.
One of my first acts as Minister for Health was to remove the special preference for Irish speakers in medical appointments outside the Gaeltacht areas. However, I believe that we were the first government department invariably to print our advertisements, educational and information literature bilingually. We were the first government department to make bilingual educational films for schools and other interested groups. Our booklets and leaflets were invariably bilingual. Finally, I was proud to be awarded the Fáinne by Seosaph O Cadhain.
I entered the department convinced that the civil service would set out to control its Minister. To some extent this was true, and for sound reasons. There was at that time a distinct difference between the education level of the permanent civil servant and the average working politician. The civil service head of a government department must have proved himself as a literate and skilled administrator. Since there was little or no industrial outlet, the only significant opportunity for the average citizen in the ’forties who wished to be an influential administrator was the civil service. Admission by examination was competitive. Progress thereafter was dependent on merit. Yet there was at least one of our Cabinet colleagues who could only read English with difficulty. Consider the dangers faced by the civil servant head of a government department whose political superior might have literacy problems. Add to this the fact that there was at least one junior minister who, because of his carefree attitude to government contracts, had his access to outside telephone conversations curtailed.
The civil service dealt with such a minister by giving him a ‘free run’ where his constituency was concerned. ‘Priority’ was given for the minister’s local political needs, in the hope that thereby his activities could be curtailed.
I did not understand, as I later came to, the importance of the practice whereby the minister ideally should discuss all matters of serious consequence with his departmental secretary, or his deputy. I resented and feared the possibility of being ‘managed’ and took an early precaution to ensure that my will was to be the final authority. A senior member of my staff had been heard on the telephone advising the Department of Finance that they should ignore a proposal put to them from my department, saying, ‘It is one of the minister’s hare-brained schemes.’ On hearing of this, I called for my departmental secretary and told him what had been said. Giving him the name of the civil servant, I instructed Mr Kennedy that the individual must cease working in my department. He was transferred immediately to another department. This replacement of a senior civil servant made it clear to everyone that, right or not, I knew my own mind, and I was in complete charge of the department from there on.
The public could not do more for its politicians. Every branch of expert specialist knowledge in administration is made available to their chosen minister, if he or she is prepared and competent to use it. Those three years working in the Department of Health, among civil servants led by Mr Kennedy and Mr Murray were the most educative, satisfying, and memorable years of my working life. I came to understand how unjust are charges commonly heard about the civil service, accused of using red tape, delay, prevarication, or making reactionary penny-pinching decisions. Definitive decisions may be taken only in accordance with the law as passed by the people’s elected representatives acting with the authority of the Oireachtas and government. The fact is, and I certainly showed it in my own department, as did Lemass, that if it is made clear that all decisions must be made in accordance with clear policy directives set out by the political head of the department, an efficient departmental machine can accomplish much. Within these clear limits, I encouraged the civil servants to use their own judgement and make their own decisions. I told them that I would stand over their decisions, but only in the context of my departmental policies and not otherwise. It is the elected representative who must be the final authority. It is the elected representative whose right it is, on behalf of the public, to make the decisions, even bad ones and wrong ones. All politicians are responsible and, more important, are answerable to the electorate for our decisions. We benefit in repeated re-election. Equally we should be made to pay for the consequences of unjust or incorrect decisions made by us in office. The regrettable fact is that, either through political incompetence or inadequacies, at times there are ministers in charge of government departments who are temperamentally or educationally unfitted for office.
I believed that a minister must maintain close and continual contact with his department’s work as it progressed, and for this reason I instituted a practice, which I understand had not hitherto been used, to establish that contact at weekly intervals would be made between myself and my senior civil servants. I instructed my department secretary to mobilise all the professional and technical department heads to prepare a detailed schedule, listing clearly the important component decisions involved from initiation to completion in the implementation of hospital, sanatoria, and clinic building projects — the sketch plans, the outline drawings, the working drawings, the electrical and plumbing quantities, and suchlike matters. It was arranged that a large wall-chart be erected in my office. On this chart was a colourful representation of the position in regard to every stage of every hospital, sanatorium or clinic in our vast nation-wide building project. I could tell at a glance the exact position in relation to every project within the scope of our departmental building programme. Visiting deputies or councillors could also be kept informed about the progress of their own special project.
Further, I instructed my personal secretary that each Monday forenoon be kept free of engagements so that, together with the staff involved, I should examine the precise state each week of our building programme. This procedure was carried through each week, all relevant staff being present to provide in detail and in person explanations for delays, failure to make decisions, or reasons for wrong decisions made on current projects. These delays in progress had to be defended or justified by my staff, from week to week. As their minister, I too was subjected to that same discipline. This procedure had the further advantage that as minister I came to know and have direct access to each one of my staff, which gave me a chance to assess their capabilities and work capacities. In turn, the civil service staff had the advantage of getting to know me and my ideas. Such continuous contact between us, I believe, led to the creation of an understanding rapport of mutual trust and efficiency.
The civil service staff at the Department of Health slowly appeared to gain in self-confidence and efficiency, enjoying a clear vision of their role and their future function. Above all, we had financial resources at our disposal. Indeed our department assumed such a powerful dynamic that we were to find ourselves in trouble with other government departments. During the Korean War in the 1950s, in anticipation of shortages, departments were advised to stock up with essential goods. Shortly after this advice was given Dan Morrissey, Minister for Industry and Commerce, who was woefully unfitted for such a complex department of state, complained bitterly of the fact that when his departmental officials had gone to Britain to lay claim to our national building needs, they were told that Ireland had already received its quota. It transpired that civil servants in the Department of Health had already moved in before any other department and had a lien on all available stocks for the nation’s enormous hospital and housing building programme.
8
Gathering Clouds
FOR THE first time in Ireland, Cabinet ministers were having to work within a coalition of differing political viewpoints. There was much hostility between the individual Fine Gael ministers, though it dissolved when faced with outside opposition in the Cabinet. James Dillon, who was notoriously wordy and could run everyone’s department except his own, appeared to delight in tormenting the hapless Dan Morrissey over his clear inability to cope with any of the complex problems of the Department of Industry and Commerce. Morrissey did not appear to understand his briefs, and was rarely able to explain them fully to us; I have seen him in tears after a ruthless interrogation, mixed with ridicule, by Dillon. Quite justifiably, Dillon demonstrated Morrissey’s incompetence; the insensitive methods used, however, were not justified. The replacement of the clear-minded Lemass, who for so long had run this department, by the blundering and inept Morrissey must have been a shocking experience for the civil servants.
Dick Mulcahy, Minister for Education and one time leader of Fine Gael, who had selflessly yielded his right to become Taoiseach to John Costello, was also treated with a mixture of levity and contempt by his party colleagues. This was not completely surprising because like Morrissey, Mulcahy appeared unable to articulate his simplest ideas or clarify to us his departmental needs. Unlike Morrissey, however, and unhappily for most of us, in Cabinet Mulcahy showed complete aplomb. He had an unlimited capacity to verbalise, as distinct from articulate, his needs. He spoke through the voluminous, resonating sound chamber made by his parrot’s beak-shaped nose. Words tumbled out, soft, shapeless, indistinct. He did not trouble to assemble a sequence of ideas. There was no sense, no intelligible form to his sentences; he did not bother with paragraphs, full stops or commas. Deeply and impenetrably buried in the centre of all this tormented English was whatever happened to be the simple needs of his department. With the non-writing end of his pencil, Mulcahy drew a succession of strange and elaborate hieroglyphics in the air in front of him. These airy movements of a deeply frustrated man were punctuated by incisive stabbing jabs at the air, with the pencil. No doubt he intended to emphasise for us points he wished to make, but was unable to articulate. The invariable effect of the intervention by Mulcahy was to transform the Cabinet into a collection of openly chattering individuals, or small private cabals, completely ignoring him. They joined one another in noisy discussions, sometimes even across the Cabinet table. The more polite would appear to recall some problem for which their personal attention was urgently needed in their department. Apologising to the Taoiseach, and muttering importantly to themselves, they would slink slowly out of the room and away. Quite rapidly, the Cabinet would disintegrate temporarily. Even the ever-attentive and polite mind of Costello would seem to wander. I felt so shamed by the ill-mannered behaviour of his colleagues and their obvious disinclination to try to decipher what Mulcahy was trying to say that, out of embarrassed pity, I recall attempting hopelessly to hold an interested conversation with him.