REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ANNUAL CEARBHALL Ó DÁLAIGH DINNER
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ANNUAL CEARBHALL Ó DÁLAIGH DINNER DUBLIN CASTLE
A Chairde. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to have this opportunity to be with you to celebrate and commemorate the life of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, a man who began life in the same year as the UCD Law Society was formed and who died 25 years ago last week on 21 March, 1978. Last Friday along with many others, I attended a particularly beautiful anniversary Mass in his honour and there it was evident that we were not simply commemorating a great jurist, a remarkable intellect, a principled and ill-fated President but a man of such huge faith, love and generosity that his absence still hurts deeply those who were privileged to know him.
I regret to say I was not privileged to know him personally but I belong to that large number of the legally literate who held him in awe as the great radical Irish jurist of the twentieth century and I also belong to the huge number of Irish men and women who regarded him with great affection, respect and not a little pity for the circumstances in which his Presidency ended. I first came to live in Dublin in 1975. Cearbhall was then in his first year as President. If he was finding the role a struggle it was nothing compared to the struggle I was having with Irish Constitutional Law and the judgments of one former Chief Justice, coming as I had from parts northerly where the writ of that written constitution did not run and where four years of law at the Queen’s University of Belfast had studiously avoided any mention of either the 1937 Constitution or indeed Cearbhall. I quickly made up the deficit realising almost immediately the historic significance of his role in giving life to the spirit of our Constitution. It is now almost a cliché to describe Irish society of the sixties and seventies as a society in transition, undergoing great change. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was one of the most subtle and effective architects of change articulating a fearless vision in which the rights of the individual and the State and the separation of powers were painted with a unique clarity. We only have to think of his role in the abolition of the doctrine of the Immunity of the State from prosecution and his articulation of the right of the individual citizen to sue the State for its wrongful acts, the overturning of the rule of “Stare Decisis” to allow the Supreme Court to overturn its earlier decisions; his ruling that fluoridation of water supplies was for the greater good and his challenging views on extradition, which led to the introduction of the 1965 Extradition Act, to see this.
Through these and many more judgments, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh infused a dynamism into Irish Constitutional Law, which brought it to life, making it a hugely important working tool in the lived lives of our citizens. Coming as I did from a divided society where confidence in the legal system was problematic, the infilling and consolidation of confidence in the legal system which is a major part of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh’s juristic legacy was and remains, a huge achievement. The law worked because it was used and used effectively to work out problems without fear or favour and because it worked, the principle of consent so essential to the civic cohesiveness of a stable society was constantly reinforced.
Today, things are very different in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement now just five years old, has played a major part in the journey towards a just, egalitarian and stable society. We are a blessed generation which enjoys a vastly different political landscape than that which Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh knew in his time as President of Ireland but I have little doubt that his deepest instincts have found voice in the core principles of the Agreement, the constitutional primacy of consent, the search for consensus, the entrenchment of human rights, the mainstreaming of equality, the creation of an accountable and fully representative police service that enjoys the support of the whole community , greater understanding and mutual respect within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between Great Britain and Ireland. This is a political landscape he would be very proud of, a landscape characterised by those principled and uncompromised values which bring vindication and reassurance to the individual citizen and a landscape too, softened by those personal qualities of grace, kindness and openness which Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh had in abundance.
History will be kind to Cearbhall the jurist as it should be for he was a champion. His short Presidency is arguably the most critical in terms of the history of the office but this evening twenty-five years on from the death of the man described by Brendan Kennelly so brilliantly as “Immediate Man,” we pay tribute to the man who loved his country, its native tongue and its people, with great passion, who served them all with humility and devotion and whose friendship was so dearly held that his name could still bring tears to the eyes of those who knew and loved him some twenty five years after his death.
UCD is fortunate to have the name of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh among its most distinguished and inspirational alumni - a great lawyer, perhaps even the greatest, a man utterly unafraid of putting principle before position and a truly good, decent human being. Not a man of the past but a man for the future we are building on the foundations he dug the hard way.
I have enjoyed being here with you this evening and I thank the UCD Law Society for inviting me.
Mar chríoch ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh go léir arís as ucht an chuireadh a thabhairt dom teacht anseo tráthnóna inniu. Go raibh maith agaibh