FitzGerald laments absence of state visits

IT IS an “extraordinary anomaly” that there has never been a state visit in either direction between two so “closely connected” countries as Ireland and Britain, according to former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.

He also said the Government had made an “awful mess” of the economy but there were people of integrity in the Cabinet, “every one of whom is personally honest, which wasn’t always the case”.

However, he said “doing the right thing rather than the populist thing is the moral challenge of politics”.

Dr FitzGerald was answering questions during a wideranging public conversation in the Pavilion theatre with broadcaster and author Olivia O'Leary as part of the Mountains to the SeaDún Laoghaire book festival.

The discussion covered elements from a forthcoming book by the former taoiseach, which he described as a family autobiography. Asked his views on the proposed State visit by Queen Elizabeth to Ireland next year, he noted that the last visit by a reigning British monarch was by Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather in 1911.

Dr FitzGerald, who was released from hospital a few days ago after suffering pneumonia, discussed his upbringing as one of three children of “nationalist revolutionaries from both sides of the war”, who had both been in the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising.

He described his mother, a Northern Protestant as a “republican socialist suffragette” who converted to Catholicism after 33 years of marriage.

She was a gambler who bet on horses and in 1946 won £150 and rented an island for a month during the summer holidays.

“We’ve always been good at spending money but accumulating and keeping it is not a family trait”.

Asked if this applied politically he said “no” and “I’d have been a good minister for finance if I’d been let”.

His father was a senior cabinet minister, but when Éamon de Valera came to power he ended the army security the family had in the wake of the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins. Dr FitzGerald said he and his older brother played cowboys and Indians, using bow, arrows and spears “to protect us from the IRA”.