Against the Tide

by Noël Browne

  Since Fianna Fáil had enacted the valuable 1947 Health Act, with its unique mother and child health service proposals, I felt they would be determined to insist on its implementation. De Valera had the added advantage that he had a single united party behind him, under a notably rigid discipline. He did not have the disadvantage of Mr Costello’s coalition of five differing points of view with which to cope. Nevertheless it proved to be a matter of ‘Hobson’s choice’, and I was to suffer for it politically. But there was no practical alternative.

  My misfortune was that this particular Fianna Fáil government, dominated by MacEntee’s conservative economic policies, was one of the worst the Republic has ever known. As if in retribution for the defeat of his idolised hero, de Valera, in 1948, one of MacEntee’s first acts as Minister for Finance in 1951 was to turn on the working-class sector of the population and abolish food subsidies. As I had during the coalition government, I again chose to ignore those policies disagreeable to me in order to concentrate on the issue of the health services, but in my speech supporting Fianna Fáil I pleaded that the unions should use their influence to redress the balance of the lost food subsidies during their wage negotiations.

  Because the state papers of 1951 to 1954 have recently been made available, we now know the precise stance taken by de Valera and Fianna Fáil when faced with hierarchical opposition to their new mother and child health service. The case made by the bishops against Fianna Fáil was the same as that made against the coalition government. There is no doubt that the general belief fostered by historians that de Valera sturdily resisted the pressure of the episcopal committee on health matters is not true. Contrary to common mythology, his attitude and policy in response to the hierarchy was one of unquestioning, unconditional surrender on every point and every demand.

  Within the whole spectrum of Irish public life, Eamon de Valera’s position was unique. He enjoyed the support of a united and loyal party. He was the only Irish politician whose national and international prestige and standing could have survived a confrontation with the bishops. He failed to rise to the occasion. Far from being the highminded statesman which he was believed to be, under pressure de Valera showed himself to be a commonplace politician intent on retaining Cabinet office in the Republic. He was no more or less of a statesman than his coalition predecessors.

  It has been de Valera’s main contribution to Irish society that he devised our unique form of conservative, sectarian Irish republicanism, It bears even less resemblance to Tone’s liberal, secular, French republicanism than does the American Republican Party; the US is at least secular and pluralist.

  Eamon de Valera had all the credentials. He had been to jail and condemned to death, but had managed to save his life when it was found that he was a Spanish American. Thereafter he became the quintessential doctrinaire Irish nationalist, as has been the way with so many foreigners in Ireland. He had opposed the Treaty not because it was a compromise, but because ‘it was not his compromise’. Marked emotionally by the early loss of both his parents, de Valera had an unconscious contempt for the opinions of others. Significantly he later admitted that he had ‘cried all the way across to Ireland from America’ as a child. There is little doubt that this early suffering marked him for life.

  Of those members of de Valera’s cabinet involved in the new negotiations, the sole member who demurred to any extent from playing puppet was the Tánaiste, Seán Lemass.

  The story of the controversy between the bishops and Fianna Fáil over the health scheme went back to the 1947 Health Act. This Act had been fully and openly debated in the Dáil before becoming law. A letter was sent privately to Mr de Valera, on 17 October 1947, in which the bishops condemned the health scheme, claiming that it was ‘an invasion of parental rights to pay for his own and his children’s health services’. In addition, they claimed, ‘there was interference in the rights of voluntary institutions, and in the medical profession’. They also accused the state of wrongly taking powers ‘to educate mothers in respect of motherhood’. De Valera did not reply to this letter until 16 February 1948, two days before the dissolution of his own government. He pleaded with the bishops that he was unable to deal with the matter, since the law in question was sub judice as to its constitutionality. However, on receipt of the letter in October, he had written immediately to Dr Ryan, who was to become Minister for Health. This correspondence was not later made available to me. De Valera enclosed the letter which he had received from the hierarchy, and included the crucially important words, ‘You will note that their Lordships consider that certain fundamental rights are threatened by the provisions to which they refer. Will you please look into this, and if it should appear that fundamental rights are endangered by any provision of the Act, take the necessary steps to ensure that, in its administration, this should be kept constantly in mind, and the rights in question respected. I should be glad to have your comments’. The letter from the hierarchy, and the accompanying memorandum, were read at a government meeting. There is very little of de Valera’s sturdy ‘Republican independence’ discernible in that memorandum; in it he laid down a policy of submission to the hierarchy. By reading the correspondence to his Cabinet, he notified his colleagues of the decision which he had already taken. There is no record of any member of the Cabinet dissenting from this.

  On their resumption of office in 1951, Fianna Fáil were faced with the dilemma of placating the bishops and at the same time attempting to honour the assurance I had received from Mr Lemass that they would ‘do their best’ to keep as much of the mother and child health scheme as was possible. The question of simply implementing the mother and child provisions of their own Act did not appear to arise.

  In June 1952 the government faced the problem by emasculating the radical proposals of their 1947 Health Act. They decided drastically to reduce the age of eligibility of the child from sixteen years to a mere six weeks. At the same time they made the scheme free to all economic groups, so that there was no means test within this narrow category. There was a considerable scaling down on other aspects of the health service in order to conform to ‘the wishes of the bishops’. Yet even this scheme was rejected by the medical consultants, and later by the bishops. This change and others went unnoticed by John Whyte, when he claimed in his Church and State in Modern Ireland that de Valera had ‘resolved the issues’ of the health service without great difficulty.

  On 16 September 1952 the Minister for Health, Dr Ryan, met Dr McQuaid. The Archbishop demanded the elimination of the clause empowering health authorities to ‘educate mothers in respect of motherhood’. Ryan agreed to meet the Archbishop’s wishes. Dr McQuaid then queried, ‘Why is the mother and infant scheme without a means test?’ He went on to suggest that the scheme should include a means test, and be restricted to the lower and middle income groups alone. From state papers it appears that ‘His Grace concluded the discussion by telling me [Dr Ryan] that I would run into trouble over the free mother and infant proposals’.

  On 6 October 1952 a further meeting was held; government representatives met Bishop Lucey of Cork, Archbishop Kinane of Cashel, Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and Dr McQuaid. ‘A detailed discussion, section by section’ took place. The amendments proposed by the bishops were all accepted by Dr Ryan for implementation in the new scheme. The meeting concluded with the triumphant comment by the bishops ‘that if the Government would meet their Lordships on the mother and infant proposals, then the scheme would have their approval and blessing’. That is, even this shadow of the original health service must include a means test.

  Yet another meeting took place, between Seán Lemass, Dr Ryan, the bishops of Cork and Galway and the Archbishops of Cashel and Dublin. The Tanaiste was reprimanded by Bishop Browne for referring to a crucial inconsistency in the hierarchy’s position, which had also been referred to by me during my interview with Cardinal Dalton. Lemass asked the members of the episcopal committee why was it that neither Dr Dalton nor any of the Norther
n Catholic bishops had condemned Bevan’s health scheme. He also begged, ‘We would like if at all possible to avoid a means test’. Lemass’s protest was contemptuously dismissed by Dr McQuaid, who said that a free scheme should not be made available to those who could afford to pay. He went on to claim that Catholic teaching taught that it was morally wrong to deprive the head of the family of his responsibility to pay for a health service and he emphasised that Catholic principles would require a means test. As my theological advisor had earlier made clear, this claim as to the morality of the health service was a travesty of the truth.

  It is interesting to note that the bishops had now abandoned any pretence of making the important distinction between what was and is Catholic social and Catholic moral teaching. Nearly invariably they referred to ‘Catholic teaching’, and appeared to make this up as they went along to suit their case.

  There followed a concerted campaign in the national newspapers against the health service. A succession of writers wrongly condemned as immoral the free no-means-test health scheme. Their arguments were backed by a series of equally tendentious and misleading articles by a succession of medical consultants. It was a measure of the resourcefulness of our opponents that they were able to mobilise a wealthy Jewish specialist named Abrahamson and a Protestant paediatrician named Collis in support of the bishops’ opposition to the mother and infant health service.

  It is possible that individual ministers in de Valera’s Cabinet would have preferred to act differently. But Cabinet papers show that whatever their personal beliefs, they at all times toed the line.

  There was now a strange development which involved a series of misunderstandings. The Medical Association were unaware of the secret negotiations with the hierarchy since Dr Tom O’Higgins was no longer a member of the Cabinet. Prematurely and wrongly they concluded that Fianna Fáil were intent on introducing a free no-means-test mother and infant health scheme, and decided to protest publicly against this. Alarmed by the consultants’ protests, Dr McQuaid and the hierarchy wrongly concluded that, in spite of their representations to the government and the assurances given to them, de Valera did not intend to carry out their instructions, and decided to issue a letter to the national press (restricted to the two Catholic papers, the Irish Press and the Irish Independent). Dr McQuaid’s rationalisation for the decision to issue this denunciation of the scheme was that ‘the faithful were waiting for guidance from the hierarchy about the health scheme’. The bishops decided to issue a letter to the ‘faithful’, protesting strongly and denouncing the health scheme and Mr de Valera’s government. Dr Dalton also explained that the hierarchy had felt that ‘some announcement was expected by the people, and silence would be assumed to imply their approval of the Bill’. De Valera’s concern, as always, was to remove the causes of contention, and not to assert his prime ministerial rights of sovereignty on behalf of his government. He was deeply shocked at the prospect of being publicly denounced by the hierarchy.

  As soon as he received the statement, on the morning of Friday 17 April 1953, he immediately telephoned the President, Seán T. O’Kelly, and asked him to try to arrange a meeting between himself and Cardinal Dalton. This proved impossible, but the President instead arranged for Mr de Valera to meet the Cardinal that afternoon in Drogheda, where he was attending a Confirmation ceremony. Archbishop McQuaid was out of the country, at the Eucharistic Congress in Australia.

  The meeting between Mr de Valera and Dr Dalton took place in the Presbytery of St Peter’s in Drogheda, in the presence of the parish priest, Monsignor John Stokes. De Valera was accompanied by Dr Ryan. De Valera appears to have planned for a possible confrontation, for on that same Friday he had ordered that a selection of the relevant documents be immediately despatched via diplomatic bag on the next flight to Rome to the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, J. B. Walsh. For years Walsh had served as secretary to the Department of External Affairs; Seán T. O’Kelly was said to have singled him out to head the Irish diplomatic service as far back as the days of the first Dáil. Walsh was told to study the documents so that ‘he would be in a position to interpret rapidly and accurately any further instructions he might be sent’. This was, presumably, so that as a last resort there could be a final appeal to the Pope.

  However, de Valera first sought a peaceful solution to the problem, stating that ‘the terms of the statement have caused me no little concern, and surprise, since I was aware that the proposals for health legislation had, on a number of occasions, been discussed by representatives of the Hierarchy, with the Tánaiste, and with the Minister for Health, and since I understood that at no stage in these discussions did it appear that any fundamental or irreconcilable difference of opinion existed’. He urged ‘the desirability, in the general interest, of the Hierarchy deferring the publication of their statement, at least until the matter had been fully clarified by further discussions between representatives of the Hierarchy and of the Government’. Recalling how I had been pilloried in the Dáil for having claimed that the episcopal committee ‘had been satisfied’ following our own negotiations in 1951, I was comforted somewhat to read de Valera’s statement that he had been ‘astonished’ by the contents, as he had understood that the earlier meetings between the bishops’ committee and the government ministers ‘had not encountered any insuperable difficulties’.

  De Valera opened his discussions with Cardinal Dalton, the Chairman of the Bishops’ Conference, by asking him to suppress the letter. Dr Dalton pointed out that he was merely the Chairman, and had no power to do so. However, de Valera then disclosed that he had arranged for an immediate meeting to take place on the following day between the bishops’ episcopal committee, himself, and Dr Ryan which could take place, if need be, in Áras an Uachtaráin. This arrangement appears to have satisfied Dr Dalton, who agreed to withhold the letter pending the new consultation. The impropriety of so using the President’s office does not appear to have occurred to de Valera.

  In accordance with these arrangements the episcopal and cabinet representatives once again met on 18 April 1953. They discussed their differences over what remained of the proposals for the mother and infant health services. It transpired that the hierarchy need not have feared that Mr de Valera’s government would bring in a health scheme which would contravene in any way those principles considered by the Irish bishops to be in conflict with Catholic teaching.

  When I had visited the Palace and met Dr McQuaid and his colleagues I had been forbidden to bring a civil servant adviser with me. Happily for our historical studies, this did not happen on the occasion of this truly momentous meeting at Áras an Uachtaráin. The state papers include a long note made at that meeting by a conscientious civil servant, possibly unnoticed by de Valera. It is disturbing and enlightening. It appears that de Valera opened the meeting with a statement in which he defined categorically his fundamental beliefs for the governmental process between church and state, and the extent and scope of the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic church in the Irish Republic. ‘The Taoiseach stated his personal position in regard to the teaching authority and the social philosophy of the Church, with regard to the position of the Bishops, as authorised teachers of faith and morals. The Taoiseach said that the view which he had already held had been confirmed by the relevant portions of an address delivered by the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Kinane, at Rockwell College, in 1951, reported in the Irish Independent of 2 June, 1951’. This statement had dealt with the bounden duty of Catholics to obey their bishops in matters of faith and morals, and the strict prohibition on Catholics from attending Trinity College, Dublin; ‘the prohibition is not a mere arbitrary one; it is based on the natural divine law itself’. In a clear reference to myself, Bishop Kinane had gone on to say:

  The need for, and the wisdom of, the prohibition against attendance at Trinity College has recently been strongly emphasised. Certain Catholic graduates of Trinity College, while openly parading their Catholicity, at the same time have publicly se
t themselves up in opposition to a fundamental part of the Catholic religion, namely the teaching authority of the Bishops, and in addition to other serious scandal, by their action, they have induced confusion in the minds of many Catholics, regarding the binding force of Episcopal teaching. Subject to the supreme magisterial authority of the Holy See, Bishops are the authentic teachers of faith and morals, in their own Diocese, and their authority includes the right to determine the boundaries of their jurisdiction, in other words to determine, in case of doubt, whether faith and morals are involved, so that one cannot evade their authority by the pretext that they have gone outside their proper sphere.

  Accordingly, amongst other consequences of this position, subjects should not oppose their Bishops’ teaching by word, by act, or in any other way, and positively they should carry out what is demanded by it . . .

  God is the author of organised civil society, as well as of the individuals who compose it, and hence, political and social activities quite as much as those which are purely personal and private, are subject to God’s moral law of which the Church is the divinely constituted interpreter and guardian . . .

  It is the province, then, of the Church Hierarchy to decide authoritatively whether political social and economic theories are in harmony with God’s law, but it is outside of their sphere to determine amongst approved theories and systems, which is best calculated to promote the temporal welfare of the community.

  In May 1953 the episcopal committee which dealt with health matters met Eamon de Valera and Dr Ryan in Cashel, Co Tipperary. The detailed notes of this fascinating meeting are at last available. De Valera and Ryan outlined the new amendments demanded by the Bishops and already accepted, but the hierarchy now reconsidered the earlier amendments. Once again re-shaped to their joint requirements, these were in turn accepted meekly by de Valera.