James Ryan has been an unjustly neglected figure in Irish history. He spent more than 30 years as a minister in various Fianna Fáil governments between 1932 and 1965 – in all portfolios he sought to, and often did, make a significant difference.
The neglect has been remedied by this accomplished biography by Michael Loughman, James Ryan and the Development of Independent Ireland, 1892-1970.
In life as in death, Ryan was overshadowed by Éamon de Valera and Seán Lemass. Ryan was a diffident speaker and no orator, though these traits had their advantages; one journalist noted his ability to “pack the most deadly wallop into the most innocuous half-articulated phrase”.
He was an ambitious legislator and administrator, but not a particularly ambitious politician. When de Valera finally resigned as taoiseach in 1959, there were only two candidates to take over – Lemass and Ryan. Ryan, a medical doctor by profession, politely declined.
READ MORE
Ryan was born the 11th of 12 children in a farming family in Tomcoole, Co Wexford, Remarkably for the period, all but one of them received a third-level education.
Many became involved in revolutionary politics. Josephine Mary “Min” was Seán MacDiarmada’s fiancee and later married General Richard Mulcahy. Phyllis married the future president of Ireland, Seán T O’Kelly. Like many Irish families, they fell out over the Treaty. Min took the side of her husband; James Ryan went anti-Treaty and even went on hunger strike in 1923, as did his sister Nell. At one stage Nell suggested to Min that she abandon her husband – an unheard-of proposition in 1920s Ireland.
From unpromising beginnings, Fianna Fáil became the dominant party in post-independence Ireland. Ryan held ministerial portfolios at difficult times in the new state – he was minister for agriculture during the economic war with the UK and during the second World War.
Loughman is particularly strong on the Mother and Child Scheme fiasco of 1951. Although it is primarily remembered for the resignation of Noël Browne and the overweening influence of the Catholic Church on that decision, it was Ryan, who twice served as minister for health, who originally proposed a scheme that would give mothers and children up to the age of 16 free health care.
It was the baleful influence of the medical profession, in league with the Catholic Church, that did for the Mother and Child Scheme. Ryan lost that battle, but the provisions of the 1953 Health Act are “underappreciated”, according to Loughman, not least the fact that hospital care, ruinously expensive for most people at the time, was to be free or subsidised for 85 per cent of the population.
Ryan’s other significant contribution to the Irish State was as minister for finance when the first Programme for Economic Expansion was published in 1958. This was later seen as the catalyst for the transformation of the Republic’s economy. While Lemass and the civil servant TK Whitaker continue to be garlanded in praise for their involvement in it, Loughman points out Ryan’s critical role. Under Ryan’s stewardship, the Department of Finance became a spending department, especially in the area of education.
Loughman has made a compelling case that Ryan ranks as the most “influential government minister not to have become Taoiseach”. This is a biography that is tautly written and eminently readable. It is worthy of its subject matter.
Ronan McGreevy is an Irish Times journalist and author. His new book Seán Lemass: The Lost Memoir will be published next month.
