Grandson recalls the 'fighting spirit' of Seán Lemass

SEÁN LEMASS’S usual working day was 9am to 5pm, his grandson Seán Haughey said yesterday.

“He would have his breakfast in bed every morning and read the papers . . . when he would then make all the decisions for the day, so that when he arrived in the office for 10am it would simply be a case of implementing those decisions,” Mr Haughey remarked.

“He would try to leave the office at 5pm and would even become edgy if he was delayed for some reason.” Mr Haughey said that when the Dáil was sitting, Lemass would leave immediately when it finished at 10pm.

“Only someone with his confidence, intelligence and organised mind could operate in such a manner,” he added.

Mr Haughey, a former Fianna Fáil minister of state and TD, gave a revealing insight into the professional and personal life of his grandfather, who was taoiseach from 1959 to 1966.

He was speaking in the Dáil chamber yesterday at a seminar for former Oireachtas members, on the theme “Ireland and Europe – 50 Years-A-Growing’’, organised by the Irish parliamentary (former members) society.

The attendance included Mr Haughey’s mother, Maureen Haughey, a daughter of Lemass, and members of the extended family.

Mr Haughey said that when his mother married Charles Haughey, later to become a minister and taoiseach, they lived for a time in the Lemass family home at 53 Palmerstown Road, Dublin.

Mr Haughey, who was nine when his grandfather died, said he saw him “as a warm and friendly man, not aloof or austere, who softened in retirement, who was aware of family events and anniversaries and who was affectionate towards his grandchildren’’.

He said Lemass was like any father of his time when his children were young, worrying, for example, about paying for their health requirements and education.When appointing Charles Haughey as a parliamentary secretary, Lemass had said he was advising him to accept the position as taoiseach but as his father-in-law he was advising him not to take it.

Mr Haughey produced a copy of the July 1963 issue of Timemagazine which featured Lemass on the cover, with a headline proclaiming "a new spirit in the ould sod".

Mr Haughey suggested that Ireland could today use the “fighting spirit’’ evident in a poem Lemass wrote on his July 15th birthday in 1921 when he was interned in Ballykinlar, Co Down.

It’s easy to cry when you’re beaten – and die/ It’s easy to craw fish and crawl/ But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight/ Why that’s the best game of them all.