Political thinker's ideals shaped modern Ireland

ANALYSIS:Declan Costello's social legacy is deep. His once extreme proposals are now taken for granted

WITH THE death this week of former TD, attorney general and president of the High Court Declan Costello, Irish society has lost one of its most significant political thinkers of the last half-century and more. His monument is the policy document Towards a Just Society, the left-of-centre programme which was accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance by the most conservative of the mainstream political parties, Fine Gael.

Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Seán Lemass, speaking in February 1962, sneered that Fine Gael was, “A lost tribe wandering in the wilderness, running around in circles.”

Costello admitted to the Fine Gael leader at the time, James Dillon, that, in another political context, he would be a “Gaitskellite socialist”, a reference to the British Labour Party leader who died in 1963. But the dead hand of Civil War divisions lay heavy on Irish politics and his father, John A Costello, had, albeit reluctantly, served as taoiseach in two Fine Gael-led governments.

Costello was determined to move beyond Civil War bitterness and, shortly after his own election to the Dáil in the 1950s, he set up the Fine Gael Research and Information Centre along with Tom O’Higgins and Alexis Fitzgerald. Among other things, this argued for greater public sector involvement in driving economic development.

If his views received a chilly response from Dillon, an old-style 19th-century liberal, the reaction of former finance minister Gerard Sweetman, described as “a red-meat conservative”, was openly hostile.

In the conservative climate of the time, Costello was seen by some members of his own party as a dangerous radical or, even worse, an abstract theorist.

However, two byelection defeats in Cork and Kildare in 1964 brought it home to the leadership that a change of course was needed. Liam Cosgrave was put in charge of a policy committee that was meant to kill off the Just Society idea but, in the event, adopted a toned-down version of the Costello proposals.

In what this newspaper described at the time as “a shotgun marriage between the right and the left”, the Just Society programme was adopted as Fine Gael policy in the 1965 general election.

Key points in the “Planning a Just Society” programme included: 1. New department of economic affairs to carry out “full-scale economic planning” (anathema to free-market right-wingers in the party); 2. Free medical service funded by contributions from the State, employers and workers; 3. Incomes policy with machinery for consultation between unions and employers; 4. Control over the credit policy of the commercial banks; 5. Rates exemption for farms with a Poor Law valuation under £25; 6. Domiciliary welfare service to look after people in their homes rather than in institutions; 7. Better treatment for those with mentally disabilities; 8. Increased expenditure on housing and other social amenities such as libraries, swimming pools, playgrounds and community centres; and 9. National programme for youth development.

In classic social democratic terms, the introduction to the programme said: “No government can abolish all the hardships and difficulties of life – but many avoidable ones exist in present-day Ireland. Until they are abolished, social justice will not be attained.”

But Dillon sent out a signal to his conservative wing when he said at the launch of the manifesto: “We shall rely on private enterprise.”

He insisted the cost of the new measures could be met from an expanding economy rather than increased taxation.

Some of the above proposals would be taken for granted on today’s political scene but they were quite radical in their day.

The free medical service proposal based on contributions is not unlike the universal health insurance plan espoused by Minister for Health Dr James Reilly. Indeed the programme explicitly proposed to bring in “a scheme of compulsory health insurance” to finance “a comprehensive national health service”.

The proposal for control over the credit policy of the commercial banks is one that many would dearly wish to have seen implemented during the infamous “property bubble” of recent years.

Again reflecting the circumstances at the time, the party sought to cover itself from attack by the Catholic Church with a statement in the programme that, “The social and economic thought of Fine Gael has been informed and moulded by the social doctrines contained in the Papal Encyclicals”.

The programme was critical of the fact that Irish social welfare payments constituted the lowest proportion of national output in the OECD and suggested that substantial increases be brought in gradually.

In addition to the idealism that underlay the Costello proposals, there was also a practical political purpose, namely, to draw the Labour Party into an alliance with Fine Gael. Labour at the time was pursuing a “go-it-alone” policy, arguing that it was time for the two major parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, to merge into one conservative unit. This approach reached its tragic apotheosis in the following general election of 1969 when the Labour aspiration that “The Seventies will be Socialist” was comprehensively rejected by the electorate.

Fine Gael also put forward a version of the Just Society programme in 1969 and the cautious shift to the left finally bore fruit with the Fine Gael-Labour coalition of 1973 as well its various successors – arguably even including the present arrangement.

Costello’s proposals also had an effect on Fianna Fáil which adjusted its policies to minimise the lure of a new-look Fine Gael. Indeed, it is suggested that one of the motivating factors in the introduction of free secondary education by Donogh O’Malley and Seán Lemass was to counteract the appeal of the Just Society programme.

A significant speech by Labour leader Brendan Corish at Tullamore in the course of the 1965 election, where he declared that his party would not, under any circumstances, join a coalition, removed any prospect of immediate implementation of the Just Society. However, over the years, it had an important influence on Irish politics and Declan Costello’s legacy remains alive to the present day.

Deaglán de Bréadún is a Political Correspondent