Today, the national question is no longer one about political liberty, but economic freedom, writes ELAINE BYRNE.
‘IN THE political and national dictionary of Ireland the word ‘impossible’ does not occur because if it did occur, this nation would never have been free.”
If you do one thing today, read taoiseach John A Costello’s November 24th, 1948 Dáil speech on the Republic of Ireland Bill, available online from the Oireachtas archives. The Act came into force on Easter Monday, 60 years ago this month. Ireland was formally declared a Republic and left the British Commonwealth.
Sunday was my Republic of Ireland day.
I read through the lengthy Dáil debates. Then listened to John Bowman’s excellent Sunday morning RTÉ Radio One programme, which reproduced roaring archival recordings of Costello standing on an all-party platform to loud applause in O’Connell Street commemorating the Act.
I spoke to Costello’s son, Declan Costello, and to former taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, the last surviving member of the 1948-1951 inter-party government and the then parliamentary secretary to Costello.
Historians have focused on the motivations for Costello’s Ottawa press conference where he announced his government’s intention to repeal the 1936 External Relations Act and declare Ireland a Republic. A leak to a Sunday newspaper and offence taken by Canadian protocol during the Governor General’s dinner in the taoiseach’s honour, are conventionally thought to have encouraged a rash response by Costello.
In his detailed, day-by-day account of the decision-making process which culminated in Ireland’s affirmation as a Republic, Costello’s private secretary, who accompanied him on his State visit to Canada, completely disregards this version of events.
Patrick Lynch would write that Costello “never acted on impulse”. The detail in Lynch’s testimony is such that he notes the number of journalists at the press conference (35) and the day’s temperature (95 degrees).
For Costello, the Republic of Ireland Act would end the “constitutional purgatory” surrounding Ireland’s ambiguous status that the External Relations Act had wrought and was happy that it would end the “perilous pirouetting on constitutional pin-points”.
Costello was adamant that the Act was not born from a “mood of flamboyant patriotism or aggressive nationalism, nor in a spirit of irresponsible isolationism”.
But most significantly, he saw the Act as “not merely the logical outcome but the inevitable result” of a peaceful political process which included the Removal of the Oath Act, the enactment of the 1937 Constitution, the handing back of the ports and the recognition of Ireland’s neutrality during the second World War.
This is possibly the most important and overlooked aspect of Costello’s decision to proclaim a Republic – the extraordinary political maturity in which it was conceived.
Costello paid public tribute to Fianna Fáil’s constitutional initiatives to end the “bitterness that divided the peoples of these two islands for centuries”.
Éamon de Valera exhibited considerable leadership which rose above partisan politics and advocated a debate that sought to advance the national interest. The debate, for the most part, did not become hostage to civil war rhetoric and the Bill was passed unanimously by both Dáil and Senate.
Costello and de Valera were united in the hope that the passage of the Act would “mean that there will never again be a going back, that never again will lives be lost, and lost in vain”. Both men agreed that the resolution of these constitutional arguments would redirect attention to the “solution of our economic, financial and social problems”.
De Valera concluded his Dáil response by quoting the 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam:
The moving finger writes and having writ
Moves on; nor all man’s eloquence nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line of it.
The focus on how the Act was conceived has possibly distracted from the positive achievements of bipartisan politics from 60 years ago.
Costello not only looked at the national picture, but to Ireland’s place in the world. He spoke of Ireland as a small island which was a big nation of “40 million people of Irish blood scattered throughout the world.” This “spiritual empire beyond the seas” would exert exceptional influence in international affairs “as a country that has no axe to grind, in bringing peoples and nations together.”
Today, the national question is no longer one about political liberty, but economic freedom. Ireland now occupies a different place in the world than that envisaged by Costello or de Valera. Writing in the New York Times on Sunday, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, Paul Krugman, wrote that worst-case outlook for the world economy was that “America could turn Irish”.
All the more reason for the Government to agree to Green Party proposals for a bipartisan approach on the financial crisis.
But do Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny profess the same measure of political maturity on national questions that distinguished Costello and de Valera?
Maybe the answer lies in Kenny’s partisan opinion piece on these pages last Saturday which condemned Fianna Fáil’s partisan decision not to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland Act.
This Act, Costello believed, would serve as a “symbol around which our people can rally . . . That symbol is the ideal of the Republic”.
Where now lies the Republic? Why has “impossible” been reintroduced into her dictionary?