Ten people – eight women and two men – have discharged the role of presidential spouse since the foundation of the State. To a greater or lesser degree, each has participated in and been viewed as part of the functioning of the presidency. The wives of the presidents have often been granted the sobriquet of “first lady”, while the husbands of our two woman presidents have sometimes been referred to as “first gentlemen”. Nick Robinson had his own take on the nomenclature, referring to himself humorously on occasion as the “first laddie”.
Yet the Constitution makes no mention of the President’s spouse. The role is undefined, with nothing to suggest duties, responsibilities or privileges. It has no salary or exchequer funding, notwithstanding the self-sacrifice that it can entail as well as the commitment in time and energy.
Although a good deal has been written about various presidential spouses, this distinguished author’s tour d’horizon is the first scholarly treatment of the topic on a broader canvas. This may be somewhat surprising, for there has been an abundance of both primary and secondary sources, listed here in an impressive bibliography, along with detailed footnotes to each chapter.
Dr Whelan, who has published widely on Irish-American relations and on the history of women, places her subject in context, both historically and in relation to custom and practice elsewhere. She examines the roles of the wives of the lord lieutenants under the ancien regime as well as the wives of the governors general in the period 1922-1936.
She also includes the wives of men who held presidencies in the evolving Irish State, from 1919 onward. Sinéad de Valera’s husband was president of the republic proclaimed by the First Dáil, and she was described as “The First Lady of Erin” when visiting the United States in 1920. Arthur Griffith was president of the Irish Free State government for seven months until his death in August 1922. His wife, Maud, eventually persuaded the government to provide her family with financial assistance as a presidential widow. Louisa Flanagan was married to WT Cosgrave, president of the Free State government from 1922 to 1932.
She concludes that, as men, Nick Robinson and Martin McAleese ‘exercised greater agency in the Áras’
Dr Whelan briefly outlines the constitutional position of presidential spouses elsewhere, notably in the United States, where, notwithstanding the absence of any mention in the Constitution, the position of First Lady has been recognised as a “bona fide federal position” since Rosalynn Carter’s years in the White House (1977-1981).
Touching on president Emmanuel Macron’s failed attempt to have his wife’s role officially recognised, she writes, “the variety of definitions, status, duties and responsibilities, associated with first ladies in a dictatorship, constitutional monarchy and republic suggest that there is no single first lady model”.
Each presidential spouse has a compact biography here with sufficient detail to enable the reader to draw certain conclusions about them as a cohort. They are people of substance, accomplishment and ability, invariably imbued with a sense of public duty. For the most part they have advanced education and they have comfortable, if not wealthy, backgrounds. Many belong to families that advanced socially and economically in the achievement of Irish independence. They have, in many cases, sublimated career or professional ambitions into the public roles which their spouse’s position has entailed for them.
The author describes a dynamic and evolving process, arguing that a “role which was marginal to the presidential institution is gradually being integrated into it. Slowly the first partner role came out of the shadows, became visible and influential, emerging as a source of authority.”
She concludes, nonetheless, that as men, Nick Robinson and Martin McAleese “exercised greater agency in the Áras ... compared to their woman predecessors it is apparent that their experiences were less bound by gendered expectations and restrictive conventions”. For future research, she argues, there should be full access to the records of the office of the President. “In this way, a body of scholarship can be created which not only acknowledges the existence of the first spouse but does justice to their exceptional public service.”
Regrettably, for an academic publisher, in one or two places the text mismanages the apostrophe. Oddly, Erskine Childers is credited with appointing Ireland’s first female judge. If he had some role, it was informal. Minister for Justice Charles Haughey proposed Eileen Kennedy to government for appointment as a district justice in 1964. These are small irritants in an informative and eminently readable piece of work.
Conor Brady is a former editor of The Irish Times
