Sean Loftus. Preserving Dublin Bay.

One of Ireland’s most colourful politicians, Sean Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus spent much of his political career fighting against an oil refinery in Dublin Bay. He also argued that Ireland should claim the oil reserves off Rockall.
Sean D Loftus was born on November 26, 1927, in Ballina. His father was a doctor who later became medical officer to the ESB. Sean grew up in Lower Fitzwilliam Street and later Ailesbury Road in Dublin..
He was educated at Colaiste Mhuire. He studied medicine at UCD, but dropped out (he once joked: “Some people are possibly alive today because I changed my mind.”) and went to England to join his brother, where he worked on the building sites.

After six years, he returned and studied law at King’s Inns. A resident of Clontarf, on the edge of Dublin Bay, he specialised in town planning law and campaigned for the sustainable development of Dublin Bay and against environmentally harmful projects in the bay.
Catholic social teaching inspired him to enter politics. He founded the Christian Democrat Movement of Ireland in 1961 and stood for Dáil Éireann in 1961, the first of 13 attempts. He was a member of Dublin City Council for 25 years and a member of the Council’s Planning and Development Committee. He lectured for 27 years in Law in Bolton Street College of Technology (now the Dublin Institute of Technology). He qualified as a barrister in 1958, and subsequently lectured in the United States, before returning home and entering politics in 1961.
In 1972 the Dublin Port and Docks Board proposed the building of an oil refinery in Dublin Bay. The plan was vigorously opposed by environmentalists, including Sean Loftus, on the grounds that it posed a serious risk of pollution. He was also involved with Fr  FX Martin in the unsuccessful attempt in the 1970s to preserve Wood Quay from the City Council’s plans to build the civic offices on the site.
While contesting the 1973 general election,  he changed his name by deed poll to “Sean D. Christian Democrat Dublin Bay Loftus” in order that his political affiliation and campaign issue would appear on the ballot paper. He was elected to Dublin Corporation in 1974.
In the following years he changed his name by deed poll, first to “Sean Dublin Bay Loftus”, then “Sean Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus” and next to “Sean Alderman Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus”.
He was eventually  elected to the Dail for Dublin North East in 1981. However he himself contributed to the end of his Dail career when he voted with Jim Kemmy of Limerick against John Bruton’s 1982 budget, bringing down Garret Fitzgerald’s Coalition government. At the February, 1982, general election he stood in two constituencies, Dublin North East and Dublin North Central, but failed to win a seat in either. He continued to contest Dail and European elections without success until 1997. He remained on Dublin City Council, and served as Lord Mayor from 1995 to 1996.

Sean Loftus continued to work as honorary legal advisor for Dublin Bay Watch, and led opposition to the 2002 application by the Dublin Port Company to fill in 52 acres of Dublin Bay. The application was rejected in June 2010 by the Planning Board while he was in hospital, having undergone brain surgery.

Sean Loftus died on July 10, 2010. He was survived by his wife Una (née Fitzsimons), and children Muireann, Fiona and Ruairi.

He was described by the Green Party leader John  Gormley as a true environmental pioneer. “He led the way even before the Green Party came into existence. Sean never wavered in his pursuit of the highest environmental ideals. He was a man of deep principle and conviction and he will be sadly missed by all those who care passionately about the environment,”

Dr Noel Browne. In conflict with Irish hierarchy.

Dr Noel Browne was first elected to Dail Eireann for the new Clann na Poblachta party in 1948. He was immediately appointed Minister for Health, but was forced to resign in 1951, following opposition to his Mother and Child free healthcare scheme from Catholic bishops and the medical profession. His place in Irish history is inextricably linked to that controversy.
Noel Browne was born in Waterford on December 20, 1915, but grew up in Derry, Athlone and Ballinrobe. His father worked as an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, partly as a result of this work, all of the Browne family became infected with tuberculosis. His fater died of the disease as did several of his siblings. His mother’s death came two years after he lost his father.
He was educated  free of charge at St. Anthony’s, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, England. He then won a scholarship to Beaumont College, Berkshire, where he befriended Neville Chance, whose father, the Dublin surgeon Arthur Chance, subsequently paid Browne’s way through medical school at Trinity College, Dublin.
After qualifying at TCD he worked as an intern at Dr Steven’s Hospital, Dublin. He married Phyllis Harrison in 1944.
His political philosophy and ideals were shaped by the fatal blows dealt to his family by TB, rife in Ireland until the 1950s. Nor did he escape the disease, diagnosed in both lungs in 1939, but survived.
His campaigning for an urgent anti-TB programme made him the choice for Minister for Health when the new progressive party, Clann na Poblachta, led by Sean Mac Bride, joined the conservative Fine Gael party in government in 1948. Though just 32, he was a crusading and dynamic innovator, using Hospital Sweepstakes funds to build a network of sanatoria to exploit the possibilities opened by the arrival of BCG vaccine. He also set up the first Irish national blood transfusion service.
Admirers say his freshness to politics helped him break new ground. But fellow Ministers reportedly found him petulant, unwilling to listen, and convinced he was always right.
However Noel Browne was soon on a collision course with the Irish Catholic hierarchy over the Mother and Child Scheme. Taking up proposals first mapped out by the previous Fianna Fail government, Dr Browne aimed to tackle high levels of child mortality by bringing in free health care for mothers and extending free health treatment for all children under 16, without a means test.
While attempts were made by Noel Browne to reach an accommodation with the hierarchy, he was off to a poor start in 1949 when he was the only Government Minister to attend the Church of Ireland funeral of Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland. Nor would his Trinity College background have been looked upon favourably.
However, he had also failed to prepare the ground with the Cabinet, who were unaware of the details of the scheme when it was launched in March, 1951. When their views were invited, the bishops, led by the arch conservative John Charles McQuaid of Dublin, avoided stating whether the plan was at odds with Catholic morality but denounced it as at variance with the Church’s social teaching. At the root of their opposition was the perception that Browne’s scheme would open the way to liberal family planning and contraception.
The plan provided for state-funded healthcare, almost unheard of in Ireland at the time. Defeated by the hierarchy and doctors and the political manoueverings of Fianna Fail, he resigned as Minister for Health on April 11, 1951. He was also expelled from Clann na Poblachta but was elected to the Dáil as an Independent TD in the subsequent election. Although many viewed his Mother and Child Scheme as a failure, much of its policies were eventually introduced by the following Fianna Fáil government.

Ironically, Browne joined Fianna Fáil in 1953, but lost his Dáil seat in the 1954 general election. He was later expelled from Fianna Fáil and became an isolated and angry figure on the Irish political landscape. In 1957 he was elected as an Independent TD. In 1958 he founded the National Progressive Democrats with Jack McQuillan and  in 1963 he and McQuillan joined the Labour Party. However he lost his seat in 1965 only to regain it in 1969. He lost the Labour nomination in 1973 and spent a spell in the Seanad before returning to the Dail in 1977. He retired from politics in 1982 and practiced as a psychiatrist.
Few figures in post WWII Ireland stirred as much controversy as Noel Browne. To some he was a dynamic radical who stood up to conservative and reactionary Catholicism. To others he was an unstable, temperamental and difficult individual who was the author of most of his own misfortune.
After retiring to the Connemara Gaeltacht he published Against the Tide, in 1986, a moving account of his family’s tragedies and his own career,  He died on May, 21, 1997, aged 81. He was survived by his wife Phylis and their two daughters.

Charles Haughey

Charles Haughey was born in Castlebar, Co Mayo, on September 16, 1925. His father, Johnny Haughey, was from Derry and in 1922 had been involved in the smuggling of 400 British rifles to the IRA in Co Donegal. Haughey senior became a captain in the Free State Army, at first in Mayo and then in Dublin.
Charlie was educated by the Christian Brothers in St Joseph’s in Fairview. A scholarship funded his education, and he qualified as an accountant, studied law and was called to the Bar. He set up the accountancy firm Haughey, Boland with his friend Harry Boland in 1951. In the same year he married Máirín Lemass, daughter of the future Taoiseach Sean Lemass.
He entered politics as a county councillor in 1953 and after several attempts won a Dail seat in Dublin North East in 1957.
His first post was Parliamentary Secretary (junior minister) to the Minister for Justice, Oscar Traynor, ultimately replaced Traynor as Minister in 1961. He introducing an impressive body of legislation in the Government led by his father-in-law, Sean Lemass. These included the Criminal Justice Act (abolishing the death penalty); the  Extradition Act and the Succession Act (guaranteeing widows a minimum of half their husband’s estate, or one third if there were children).
Moving to Agriculture in 1966, Haughey delighted smallholders by introducing the so-called “farmers’ dole”, a device to pay unemployment benefit without deductions in respect of earnings from the land.
Haughey’s career stumbled when Lemass retired in 1966. A rival successor, George Colley, squared up to Haughey, and Jack Lynch emerged as a compromise candidate. Haughey, with characteristic adroitness, backed Lynch in a campaign in which Colley suffered a 51 votes to 19 defeat.
Haughey was rewarded with the Finance Ministry, and he impressed the public with largesse.  Pensioners were granted exemption from TV licences and telephone rental charges, and given free electricity and public transport passes. Writers, artists and composers were exempted from income tax on their creative work, a move which brought many high-earning and high profile artists and writers to Ireland in the short term.

Charlie Haughey and Neil Blaney at the time of the Arms Trial.

In the 1960s, Mr Haughey began accumulating assets including a farm in Meath, the island of Innishvickillaun off Co Kerry, and the 18th century house and lands at Abbeville in Kinsealy, north Co Dublin.
His wealth and standard of living, even then well beyond his apparent means on a political salary, became a source of great media interest. However, Mr Haughey refused to entertain questions about his wealth and always insisted his financial affairs were out of bounds for journalists.
Despite a glittering early ministerial career throughout the 1960s during which Haughey was seen to represent a new breed of Fianna Fail politician, his political life came to a dramatic and thundering standstill in 1970. Mr Haughey, along with Neil Blaney, was sacked from Jack Lynch’s government after they were accused of using a fund established to aid the nationalist community in Northern Ireland to import guns for the IRA
Cleared by the subsequent Arms Trial, Haughey was cast into the political wilderness. While Blaney and Kevin Boland left Fianna Fail in the wake of that crisis, Haughey bided his time on the backbenches and relentlessly toured Fianna Fail branches throughout the country rebuilding his support at the grassroots level, speaking at dinners on what he called “the rubber chicken circuit”.

Around this time he was interviewed by journalist Gerry O’Regan, later to become editor of the Irish Independednt. Haughey was particularly liked for his charm, graciousness and humour. “But those close-hooded eyes,”  recalled O’Regan in 2011,  “scarcely concealed that hint of menace for which he would become notorious throughout his political life. And so it was that the mood changed in a heartbeat when I asked him to comment on a remark made by one of his arch political enemies at the time, writer and Labour Party activist Conor Cruise O’Brien. ‘O’Brien has said there are enough stories about you to make you into a kind of legend. What have you got to say to that?’ I remarked nervously. The eyes seemed to narrow even more and his body coiled in scarcely concealed rage.”

“If you’re not careful, I’ll f*ck you through the f*cking window. And that’s off the record,” he retorted.

After the runaway Fianna Fail general election success of 1977, Lynch appointed Haughey as Minister for Health, where he created a high profile with a public health education campaign, even temporarily abandoning smoking and drinking in pursuit of his new image.
He solved the government’s peculiar contraception dilemma with what he cynically described as “an Irish solution to an Irish problem”. The Supreme Court had legalised contraception, but the Catholic Church had demanded regulations governing sales of prophylactics. Haughey restricted sales to married couples, and only on prescription.
In 1979 Mr Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as leader after a bitter battle with his old political rival George Colley.
Haughey’s famous exhortation to the electorate as Ireland spiralled into a prolonged economic crisis in 1980 that we were living “way beyond our means” later came back to haunt him as tales of his own high living gradually emerged from the tribunals, including the McCracken tribunal and the Moriarty tribunal.
The Moriarty tribunal  heard estimates from the Revenue Commissioners of Mr Haughey’s spending from 1977 to 1997, ranged from a maximum of £9.9 million to a minimum of £6 million.
In negotiations, the Revenue and Mr Haughey’s agents arrived a figure of £6.9 million, which they agreed could be viewed as representative of the total gifts he had received in that period.
Some £1.3 million was paid to Haughey by Ben Dunne alone and the politician racked up massive bills at expensive restaurants and buying designer clothes, including thousands spent on shirts custom-made for him in Paris.
When the Dublin Evening Press published details of Haughey’s £1 million overdraft, AIB hotly denied the report, describing it as “outlandishly inaccurate”. That was true, but only because the bank had already voluntarily written off much of the Haughey debt.

In spring of 1982 he led Fianna Fail into government after reaching agreement with the Independent TD fo Dublin Central, Tony Gregory. The Gregory Deal, as it became known, involved a 100 million punt urban renewal plan for Gregory’s inner city constituency.

The word GUBU – coined by Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1982 – was to become permanently attached to Haughey’s political legacy. Its origins lay in Haughey’s reaction to the disclosure that on-the-run murderer Malcolm MacArthur had been found at the apartment of then Attorney General Patrick Connolly. Upon hearing the news, Haughey famously described the unfolding events as grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented, which almost immediately led to the acronym that became shorthand for the many controversies of his administrations.
Haughey bitterly attacked the Hillsborough Agreement on Northern Ireland when it was signed by Garrett FitzGerald in 1985, but administered it happily when he regained power in 1987, despite reservations about what he called “its constitutional aspects”.
Charlie Haughey’s close friends always testified to his charm, generosity and affability, as well as to his accurate judgment. Those outside that firmly-drawn circle saw only a diminutive figure (he was just 5 ft 5 in tall, and wore Cuban-heeled shoes to add height) with a hooded expression and a conspiratorial manner, coupled with a quite remarkable degree of self-control under pressure. Cruise O’Brien caustically noted his “sulphuric charm”.
In 1992, Former Fianna Fáil Justice Minister Sean Doherty appeared on the late-night chat show on RTE television. In an apparently off-the-cuff interview Doherty discussed the phone-tapping at length. At a subsequent press conference, Doherty contradicted a decade’s denials and admitted that Mr Haughey, while Taoiseach in 1982, had known about the phone tapping. Doherty also confirmed that he had personally given Haughey transcripts of the tapes.
On his final day in the Dail as Taoiseach, on February 11, 1992, Mr Haughey quoted from Othello: “I have done the State some service; They know’t. No more of that.”

Mr Haughey was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995.

When Haughey was prosecuted in the Dublin Circuit Court in June 2000 for obstructing the McCracken Tribunal of Inquiry by hiding evidence of his offshore bank accounts, the judge decided that it would be impossible for him to receive a fair trial in view of statements by the Tanaiste, Mary Harney, who had called for jail penalties for corrupt politicians.
The trial was adjourned indefinitely. A £2 million retrospective income tax assessment was settled by Haughey for half that amount.

Mr Haughey consistently topped the poll in his Dublin North Central constituency, where he remained extremely popular, particularly with older voters, despite the continuing revelations about his lavish lifestyle.
Charles Haughey died on June 13, 2006, and was survived by his wife Maureen, his daughter Eimear and sons Ciaran, Conor and Sean.

Sean Francis Lemass was born on July15, 1899, in Dublin. He was the second of seven children born to John and Frances Lemass. His father had a hatter’s shop in Capel Street. Sean was educated by the Christian Brothers in Dublin. One of his classmates was the popular Irish comedian Jimmy O’Dea. Jimmy was to be best man at Lemass’s wedding and their friendship lasted a lifetime.

In January 1915 he joined the Volunteers, even though he was only 15 at the time. On Easter Monday 1916, Sean and his brother Noel Lemass joined the garrison at the GPO. When  the Rising ended on the Friday, Lemass, due to his age, was set free.

Sean Lemass: Pragamtic approach.

He took part in the War of Independence and in 1920 was interned in Ballykinlar, Co Down. He was released after the 1921 Treaty. He took the Anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and was second in command to Rory O Connor in the Four Courts. Outnumbered and under heavy bombardment from the Free State troops, he managed to escape. He was later captured and imprisoned again. He was elected to the Dail in 1922. The following year his brother Noel’s body was found in the Dublin Mountains. Sean Lemass was released from prison on compassionate grounds. He married Kathleen Hughes in August 1924. They had four children – Maureen (later Mrs Charles Haughey), Peggy, Noel and Sheila.
He supported Eamon de Valera’s abstentionist policy and became a founder-member of Fianna Fail. Along with Gerry Boland he was responsible for building up the party throughout the country into the election machine it still is today. It was he who, in 1928, described Fianna Fail as “a slightly constutional party”.
He had an interest in economics and industry and when Fianna Fail came to power in 1932, he became Minister for Industry and Commerce and the youngest member of the cabinet. He believed in self-sufficiency, advocating protectionism. He had a pragmatic approach and was responsible for setting up among others the ESB, the Sugar Company and Aer Lingus.

Stagnation
Following the outbreak of WWII in 1939, he became Minister for Supplies, with responsibility for rationing, and succeeded Sean T O’Kelly as Tanaiste in 1945. He remained a minister until Fianna Fail were defeated in the 1948 election. He was managing director of the Irish Press newspaper while in Opposition and wrote regularly for the paper under a pen name. During his time there The Sunday Press was launched.  Back in power in 1951, Lemass returned to Industry and Commerce but he was unable to tackle the country’s stagnation as de Valera remained uninformed and conservative on economic issues.
Lemass became Taoiseach in June, 1959, when de Valera was elected President. He had already noted the economic talents of the Secretary of the Department of Finance, TK Whitaker, who’s document ‘Economic Development’ became the basis of the First Programme for Economic Expansion  in 1958. This became a priority of Lemass’s goverment and paved the way for Ireland’s first steps towards economic progress.
Lemass had clearly left his protectionist days behind him and, in 1961, set about joining the EEC, the same year that Teilifis Eireann was established. By 1963 the unemployment rate and emigration had fallen dramatically in all but the western seaboard.
After the 1965 election, Lemass was relected Taoiseach. There followed his next major departure from traditional lines. With Whitaker, who was born in Restrevor, Co Down, acting as go-between, a historic meeting was arranged in 1965  in Stormont between Lemass and the Northern Prime Minister Terence O’Neill . This co-operation between the two governments, which would concentrate on such issues as tourism, trade and agriculture, also started a thaw in North/South relations.
On 10 November. 1966. Lemass announced his retirement and was succeeded by Jack Lynch. He died in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, on May 11, 1971, and was given a State funeral.