Garret FitzGerald was born in Dublin on February 9, 1926. At the time, his father Desmond was Minister for External Affairs. His mother, Mabel McConnell, was from a Northern Protestant family. Desmond had taken the pro-Treaty side in the Civil War, while Mabel was strongly opposed, but not in an active way. The family moved to Bray where the young boy recalled distinguished men of letters such as WB Yeats, TS Eliot and Jacques Maritain visiting his father, who had been a poet himself in pre-war London, linked with the Imagist movement.
Garret FitzGerald was educated in Belvedere College. By the age of 14 he had spent two summers in France learning the language. He was precocious in other ways and campaigned in school against the Nazi persecution of Jews and Christians even before the second World War had begun.
He joined the Local Defence Force in 1942, although under age. In UCD he studied history, French and Spanish. He also met Joan O’Farrell whom he married in 1947. Charles Haughey was a student contemporary.
While his father wanted him to study law, Garret, instead joined Aer Lingus where he worked for 11 years, becoming an expert an expert on statistics and airline schedules. He supplemented his salary with freelance journalism for newspapers around the world. At various times he was correspondent in Dublin for the Financial Times, the Economist and the BBC.
He campaigned for Fine Gael in the 1948 general election, assuming the party was pro-Commonwealth and sympathetic to Nato, but was disillusioned when the new government led by John A Costello declared a Republic and left the Commonwealth.
In 1958 he left Aer Lingus to continue his journalism and start up an economic consultancy and do part-time lecturing.
His articles on the economy, at first rejected by Independent Newspapers, appeared in The Irish Times had become required reading for Ministers and senior civil servants, although he had no formal qualifications in economics. He was later awarded a PhD for his thesis on planning in Ireland, which he turned into a book. He also published a book on semi-State companies. In 1959 he was appointed a junior lecturer in UCD, while continuing his journalism and consultancy work.
Politics re-entered his busy life when Declan Costello asked him in 1964 to help in the drafting his blueprint for Fine Gael, The Just Society.
Seanad
He declined to stand for Fine Gael in the 1965 general election in Dublin South-East but was elected to the Seanad several months later and he was appointed to the party front bench by the new Fine Gael leader, Liam Cosgrave, with whom he was to have an uneasy relationship in the years to come. During his four years in the Seanad, FitzGerald promoted Ireland’s entry into the EEC.
The publication of the Humanae Vitae encyclical condemning artificial contraception in 1968 reawakened his interest in theology and he worked with a group of lay Catholics to submit a highly critical report on the document to the Irish bishops. He had come to believe his previous objections to artificial contraception had been “aesthetic rather than moral”.
He was elected in 1969 to the Dáil where was able to display his expertise in all areas and one newspaper cartoon portrayed a Fine Gael front bench of 24 Garret FitzGeralds.
In 1971 he became spokesman on Finance but his relations with Liam Cosgrave were becoming more strained as the latter suspected the liberal wing of the party, leading to Cosgrave’s infamous “mongrel foxes” speech at the 1972 ardfheis.
A Fine Gael/Labour Coalition won power in the 1973 election and Garret Fitzgerald became Minister for Foreign Affairs. The EEC and Northern Ireland were to dominate his life over the next four years. He ensured the first Irish presidency of the EEC in 1975 was a success.
On Northern Ireland, he was prominent in the lead-up to the Sunningdale negotiations to give a cross-Border dimension to the new power-sharing system set up in Stormont. He had already set out his ideas on the subject in his 1972 book Towards a New Ireland.
FitzGerald found his relations with Liam Cosgrave improved while they were in government, despite the latter’s decision to vote against his own government’s Bill to legalise contraception. FitzGerald even toyed with the idea of resigning over the debacle.
When Cosgrave resigned immediately after the Coalition’s rout by Fianna Fáil in the 1977 election, Garret FitzGerald took over as leader of Fine Gael.
He embarked on his new role with customary enthusiasm, producing a 25,000-word document for his colleagues on his ideas for resolving problems in the social, political and educational areas, among others. He ensured the party would now be firmly behind the “social democratic principles of The Just Society”. He set about a radical overhaul of the Fine Gael organisation, appointing two key assistants, Peter Prendergast and Ted Nealon.
Haughey
When Charles Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach in December 1979, the stage was set for a confrontation between the two leaders which was to dominate Irish politics over the next seven years. Garret FitzGerald’s “flawed pedigree” criticism of Haughey on the day of his nomination did not strike the right note and FitzGerald subsequently expressed regret at using the phrase”.
By the time of the next general election in June 1981, Fine Gael morale was high and the party machine was in top gear after four years of preparation. A programme had been agreed with Labour and his whistle-stop tour by train in which Joan FitzGerald took part, galvanised the Fine Gael campaign.
Fine Gael triumphed, which increased its number of seats in an enlarged Dáil from 43 to 65 and raised its vote to its highest level in more than 50 years. But the new Coalition needed the support of three Independent TDs to get FitzGerald elected as Taoiseach.
He made headlines that September when he announced a “constitutional crusade” for a “genuine Republic” freed from sectarian laws. But a pledge he had given the anti-abortion campaign before the election to hold a referendum to put a clause in the Constitution would come back to haunt him.
The inexperience of the new ministers was exposed in the 1982 budget, which included cuts in some food subsidies and the imposition of VAT on clothing and footwear. The Independents were not consulted beforehand and the government fell when Jim Kemmy and Seán Loftus voted with Fianna Fáil. FitzGerald wrote later that with the announcement of the Dáil vote, he experienced “a moment of total exhilaration” that they would be “going into battle on a budget we could defend with conviction and enthusiasm”. It is unlikely many in his party felt similarly.
The ensuing election in February 1982 resulted in a slight improvement in Fianna Fáil’s position, while Fine Gael had a net loss of only two seats.
The spell in opposition lasted only nine months as Haughey’s Fianna Fáil minority government gradually crumbled in the face of internal dissension and the GUBU scandal involving the murderer, Malcolm Macarthur, who had sought refuge with the attorney general, Patrick Connolly, who was unaware of his crimes.
Fine Gael and Labour swept back into power in November, with Fine Gael recording its best ever result with 39 per cent of the votes and 70 seats, bringing them within five seats of Fianna Fáil. But the Coalition was again faced with a serious situation in the public finances, which would involve cutbacks and economic stringency. Again, this would create strains between the two parties but Garret FitzGerald tried hard to establish good relations with Dick Spring, the new Labour leader, who was younger than the Taoiseach’s eldest son.
Cabinet meetings became long-drawn-out affairs that exhausted the participants as FitzGerald tried to ensure there was consensus and not rule by majority. Some Ministers complained the meetings were at times like “academic tutorials”. It became all downhill for the coalition following the initial euphoria of regaining office. The top rate of income tax rose to 65 per cent, a property tax was introduced, unemployment rose, emigration soared to levels not seen since the 1950s and the interest on the national debt threatened to absorb all taxation.
FitzGerald inherited what he called a “disastrous” situation in Anglo-Irish relations following the rift between Haughey and the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, over the Falklands War and her displeasure at how Haughey had allowed the results of their 1980 summit in Dublin on Northern Ireland to be exaggerated. FitzGerald set out to mend the relationship between Dublin and London and to break the impasse in Northern Ireland since the breakdown of power-sharing in 1974. The first step was to set up the New Ireland Forum, out of which FitzGerald hoped a nationalist consensus would emerge from which he could negotiate a new agreement with Britain. Personally, he hoped for an agreement incorporating a joint-authority model for Northern Ireland and power-sharing, in return for amendments of Articles Two and Three of the Constitution, but Mrs Thatcher baulked at this.
The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement was the highlight of his second term as Taoiseach. For the first time since 1921, a British government gave Dublin a formal consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. It was to take another 13 years, however, before the Unionists and Sinn Féin could be drawn into the wider Belfast Agreement.
Garret FitzGerald’s final 18 months in power were increasingly difficult on the domestic front. The divorce referendum was another defeat but his government did get through progressive contraception legislation. When the time came to draft the 1987 budget, the coalition partners recognised, in amicable enough fashion thanks to the good relationship between FitzGerald and Dick Spring, that they had come to the parting of the ways over spending on health and social welfare.
On a personal level, it had been a sad year for Garret FitzGerald. Two of his brothers, Desmond and Pierce, had died in a nine-month period. Another brother, Fergus, had died in 1983. Joan’s health was also a constant preoccupation. For many years she battled a crippling disease and was confined to a wheelchair, frequently pushed by her husband.
The arrival of the Progressive Democrats was at first seen by Garret FitzGerald as well as many others as a major threat to Fianna Fáil in the 1987 election but the new party’s 14 seats were won largely at the expense of Fine Gael, which lost 19 seats. He resigned as party leader.
Retirement
After two years on the backbenches Garret Fitzgerald resigned from active politics, but retirement only meant more time for intellectual pursuits as well as for his family. And in September 1991, he resumed writing his Saturday column for The Irish Times, which he was to continue writing until the time of his death.
He produced his memoirs, All in a Life, in 1991, amounting to 674. It was the first time a Taoiseach had written his autobiography.
He also became an active chancellor of the National University of Ireland. In 2003, he published a study of contemporary problems entitled Reflections on the Irish State.
Although retired from active politics, he took a keen interest in politics right up to the end, campaigning in the second Lisbon Treaty referendum in 2009 through his writing and handing out leaflets on the street as well.
Garret FitzGerald had to deal with some personal as well as public financial crises during his long career. On his first appointment as a Minister in 1973, his after-tax income fell suddenly by 40 per cent because he had to give up his work as economic consultant, university lecturer and freelance journalist.
He was obliged to sell his large house on Dublin’s Eglinton Road and move to a smaller one. Several years later, he moved to what became the permanent home on Palmerston Road, parts of which were shared by different members of his family.
A more serious crisis occurred as a result of his association with Guinness Peat Aviation, founded by Tony Ryan. He was appointed a director of GPA after leaving politics and in anticipation of the public flotation of the company he and others in GPA borrowed substantial amounts of money to purchase shares at a favourable price, which was expected to rise when the company went public.
When the flotation was cancelled due to a stock market downfall, FitzGerald was left owing several hundred thousand pounds to AIB. He sold his house to his son Mark and lived in an apartment in the house but still owed an estimated £230,000 to AIB. He paid around £50,000 and the rest was written off by the bank.
Few politicians who have attained the top rank have had so few political enemies. He visited his old adversary, the dying Charles Haughey in Kinsealy. “Garret the Good”, the nickname given to him by the journalist John Healy was meant to be ironic, but it reflected a truth about him.
He was seen, for all his mistakes, to be a man of integrity, devoted to the good of the State and with an enthusiasm for the rough and tumble of politics.
Garret FitzGerald died on May 19, 2011, and was accorded a State funeral. He was predeceased by Joan in 1999 and is survived by his sons, John and Mark, and his daughter, Mary.