PRESIDENT’S REMARKS AT THE LAUNCH OF THE JOURNAL OF THE BRAY CUALANN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PRESIDENT’S REMARKS AT THE LAUNCH OF THE JOURNAL OF THE BRAY CUALANN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid seo. Tá me buíoch dibh as an cuireadh
agus an fáilte fiorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to be here for the launch of this special issue of
the Bray Cualann Historical Society. My thanks to my old friend and colleague
Professor Colum Kenny and the Society for inviting me.
Bray has seen many Ireland’s come and go from its days as a small fishing village,
through its growth first as a large seaside resort and then as a busy town adjacent to the
capital. It has its intimate local history, its place in our national narrative and the
international chapters carved by its emigrant sons and daughters. The members of this
society have been the custodians, chroniclers, archivers, analysers and tellers of Bray’s
many stories and this evening we gather in memory of Cearbhall O’Dalaigh, one of its
finest sons, one of Ireland’s finest sons, born here on the 12th February 1911.
He was probably not even in Junior Infants in St. Cronan’s Boys National School when
Ireland entered a convulsive and history changing era marked by the Easter Rising. The
child born into the disintegrating epoch of British colonialism in Ireland would become a
teenager in a new and independent Ireland. The grinding poverty, inequalities and harsh
social landscape which were the legacy of the Old Empire were now cantilevered by the
surging idealism, patriotism and romanticism of a small nation with big and noble ideas,
bravely marching towards a better future for all our people. It was a complex and chaotic
place as the old gave way to the emerging and still inchoate new, a place of great
contradictions, great passions and vanities that set neighbour against neighbour and
brother against brother.
Mark Twain has famously said that ‘the past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.’ In
many ways you could say that the man of multifarious characteristics that was Cearbhall
O’Dalaigh, rhymed with his times. He was one of the most accomplished and innovative
lawyers this country has ever produced, a truly revolutionary jurist, respected and
admired far beyond Ireland’s shores. His intellectual brilliance saw him become in turn
the youngest ever Attorney General, the youngest ever member of the Supreme Court,
the youngest Chief Justice and Ireland’s first judge at the European Court of Justice. Yet
for all that he was thoroughly immersed in the law he was also a highly cultured man of
considerable artistic sensibility, a talented actor, a lover of literature, a devotee of our
beautiful Irish language. Individualistic, even idiosyncratic, a man unafraid to be
different, to forge a new path, he drew deeply from a solid and unswerving sense of
justice, of public service and love of his country.
By the time Cearbhall O’Dalaigh became Ireland’s fifth President in 1974, a formidable
legal career behind him, Ireland was entering another phase of considerable catharsis.
We had enthusiastically joined the great adventure in European partnership that is the
European Union, the advent of free second level education was just beginning to harness
and harvest Ireland’s intellectual power and confidence, women who did not even have
the vote when Cearbhall was born were now entitled to equal pay and equal opportunity.
A fresh outward looking new dynamic was at work, as Ireland took her place as an equal
and sovereign nation around the European table. But the past was also continuing to
wreak havoc - mainly north of the Border where the troubles engulfed everyday life in a
mire of sectarian strife that was to last over thirty years.
It was a frightening time of awful violence and fear of violence. Cool heads were hard to
find. Cearbhall O’Dalaigh was less than two years into his presidency, at this critical time
in our development as a nation when the shadow of the Troubles brought his tenure of
office to an end in dramatic and controversial circumstances. The killing of the British
Ambassador to Ireland Sir Christopher Ewart Biggs had prompted the Government to
move to declare a State of Emergency. As President he was the guardian of the
Constitution. As Cearbahll O’Dalaigh he was an outstanding and peerless Constitutional
lawyer. He referred the Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court to test its
constitutionality. The wrath of the Minister for Defence of the day was swift in coming
and memorably terse. When the Taoiseach refused to accept the Minister’s resignation,
the die was cast and President O’Dalaigh resigned in his own words "to protect the
dignity and independence of the presidency as an institution." The humility, grace and
dignity of his resignation were typical of the man. So too was the heartache it caused him
which was to blight the few short years between his resignation and his death two years
later at the age of 67. The Supreme Court was later to find the legislation compatible with
the Constitution.
History will be kind to Cearbhall O’Dalaigh. He is entitled to that. Lawyers of my
generation knew him to be a brave, cutting edge and inspiring jurist, an innovative and
courageous leader just as the Irish people knew him as a man of simple decent honour,
unfazed by personal position or privilege despite the many achievements which his
brilliance had brought him. His life, in particular its penultimate chapter as President
will no doubt remain a subject of debate, even heated debate. Those eventful two years as
President were but a thin slice of the life of a man who when he took on the role at the
age of 65 had behind him the kind of phenomenally successful career both nationally and
internationally that comes along all too rarely.
Maybe in this town which knew him from birth he can expect the full story to be told and
with love. He would undoubtedly be proud of the investment made in peace-making and
the face that we have at last a hard-earned and working peace on this island which will in
time radically transform the future of those who share this island. Though he lived
through almost permanent recession and persistent mass emigration, he would have
been proud to see the social and economic progress which opened Ireland up so deeply
and widely during the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first.
But today too we have a stricken economy which is altering our present and colouring our future in ways that our people are finding both hard to credit and hard to endure. It is no comfort that this too is one thin slice of Ireland’s history, that it too will give way to a new and better chapter in time.
Living through it and worried as we are about the future we can only hope that sooner than we dare to believe societies like yours which document and chart our history will tell how our strong and resilient little democratic nation, faced into its problems with courage, honour and determination and faced them down, rhyming with the many other testing times that make up the meandering narrative of our country’s history. Has Cearbahll O’Dalaigh’s life any significance for us in this moment beyond his past contributions as lawyer, judge and President.
I think it has, for one thing stands out above all the brilliance, all the accolades, all the controversy and that is, service, selfless, devoted, humble and unstinting, to his country, its heritage and its future. They say what is learnt in childhood is engraved on stone. The engraving started here, in Bray, one hundred years ago this week. Thank you to those like the Bray Cualann Historical Society who think the long slow engraving process worthy of watching and telling.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go leir.