John Horgan recounts in his book Sean Lemass The Enigmatic Patriot, how Lemass and General Sean MacEoin, two men who had fought together 30 years earlier and later against each other in the Civil War, argued when a measure to ban fireworks ended up prohibiting the sale of caps for toy guns. "These two former revolutionaries were locking horns in the Dail over the dangers supposedly caused by cap pistols. Lemass won the exchange hands down with a withering final remark. "Was the Minister ever a boy?" The Blue Shirts will have their day out on Wednesday when Brian Maye's Arthur Griffith will be launched by Garret FitzGerald but this week it was the turn of the Soldiers of Destiny.
The Lemass launch took place at the National Museum in Kildare Street, where members of staff gathered outside with IMPACT placards. It was explained to Quidnunc that they were protesting - not picketing - so it was alright for the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to walk past them and into the museum. When the new museum was opened at Collins Barracks recently, he wouldn't enter the building in deference to the trade unionists outside.
Praising Lemass for his forward thinking, the Taoiseach said that unfortunately in the late 1940s and early 1950s he had to contend with some colleagues who were a lot more conservative than he was and Ireland did not make the same progress then as other countries. "Sean Lemass, like Michael Collins, belongs to the country at large, not to any one party. His portrait is the only one to have stayed put in the office which I now occupy through successive changes of Taoiseach."
Lemass's grandson Sean Haughey TD was there as was his daughter-in-law, former politician Eileen Lemass. Apart from deputy Liz McManus of Democratic Left, it was a very Fianna Fail affair. Those who turned up included Ministers Joe Walsh and Tom Kitt and deputies Brian and Conor Lenihan and Michael O'Kennedy, Senator Donie Cassidy, Judges Ronan Keane and Catherine McGuinness and poet Seamus Heaney.