Kerry's Political Dynasties: A Historical Perspective

Date for your diary:

Kerry's Political Dynasties: A Historical Perspective, a public talk/presentation by yours truly, based on my book on the subject, on the following dates:

Wednesday, 30 October at 8pm - Meadowlands Hotel, Tralee

Thursday, 31 October at 8pm - Killarney Court Hotel, Killarney

All welcome

Is the Oireachtas more hereditary than the House of Lords?

Below is a piece from this week's Sunday Independent on political dynasties which contains a plug for a certain book on the subject:


Oireachtas 'more hereditary' than Lords
Sunday Independent 9th June 2013

by Ruaidhri Giblin                                    
                   
The son of a former Fine Gael Finance Minister claims there is now a greater proportion of "hereditary" politicians in the Oireachtas than there are hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
Peter Sweetman, who turned down the chance to stand for office when his father, Gerard, died in a road traffic accident in 1970, made the claim last week.
At least 45 TDs and senators have a family member who also served in the Dail or Seanad. In addition to these, many sitting senators gave their local authority seats to family members when they were appointed to the upper house two years ago.
Of the 763 seats in Britain's House of Lords, 88 are held by hereditary peers, the dukes, earls, viscounts and barons who inherited their seats because of family lineage.
However, Ireland's political dynasties occupy a greater proportion of seats in the Oireachtas than hereditary peers do in the House of Lords.
"One in five current members of the Oireachtas has had a political predecessor in the family," Mr Sweetman said. "About one in eight members of the House of Lords is a hereditary peer."
Gerard Sweetman was a prominent opposition TD at the time of his death. His son, Peter, claims he is rare in being an eligible son of a TD who didn't stand in a by-election when his father died in office.
"It seems to be standard procedure for family members to run for office and I think it's wrong," Sweetman said.
Owen O'Shea, author of Heirs to the Kingdom: Kerry's Political Dynasties said the phenomenon predates the foundation of the State by many centuries.
He said Irish voters demanded an intimate political relationship with their councillors and TDs, because of parochial 'parish-pump' politics.
"Four of Kerry's six TDs have or had at least one relative in elected positions and 14 of the county's 27 councillors are members of political dynasties," Mr O'Shea said.
He said members of political dynasties feel a sense of obligation to their predecessors and voters tend to think that if his father or grandfather was good enough for the constituency then the next generation can't be that bad.
Until the electoral systems changes and TDs become legislators rather than representatives, dynasties will continue, Mr O'Shea said.
The aftermath of the 2011 General Election saw the end of a number of political dynasties such as the Haugheys and Andrews. The death of Brian Lenihan saw the end of another Fianna Fáil dynasty.
The most prominent existing "heir" is Taoiseach Enda Kenny, son of famous Mayo footballer and later TD Henry Kenny. Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney was elected in a by-election following the sudden death of his father, Hugh Coveney.
Fianna Fail's Niall Collins, Dara Calleary and Eamon O Cuiv are the third generation of TDs from their families.

               

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/oireachtas-more-hereditary-than-lords-29330918.html

 

'Heirs to the Kingdom: Kerry's Political Dynasties' (O'Brien Press, 2011) by Owen O'Shea is available from www.obrien.ie and www.amazon.co.uk

Death of Haughey's great Kerry confidante Tom Fitzgerald

The late Tom Fitzgerald

The death took place on Friday last (8 June) of one of Charles Haughey's closest friends and confidantes, Tom Fitzgerald. The former Fianna Fáil senator from Dingle was closely involved in building Haughey's Inisvickillane home and was its unofficial caretaker. He remained close to the former Taoiseach right up until his death in 2006, always joining Haughey on his island with the ex-Fianna Fáil leader visited there.

I had the privilege of conducting a lengthy interview with Tom Fitzgerald at his Dingle home just a few weeks ago during which he spoke about his own career on Kerry County Council and in Seanad Eireann as well as many warm anecdotes about his friend from Kinsealy. Whatever about the controversies of Haughey's political career, Fitzgerald remained a loyal friend and ally of the ex-Taoiseach and his family.

Below is a link to an article which the Sunday Independent carried over the weekend. I hope to publish some more material from the late former senator's interview in the near future. May he rest in peace.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/haugheys-close-confidante-and-island-caretaker-dies-29330902.html

The Kerry women who have served in the Oireachtas and on Kerry County Council

As the debate about gender quotas and the need for more women in representative politics in Ireland continues, it is worth listing the women who have represented Kerry in the Oireachtas as well as the women who have served on Kerry County Council over the years. It is a shockingly brief list that tells its own story.

Kit Ahern

It is remarkable to think that just four Kerry women have sat in the Dáil since 1919, the longest serving being Fianna Fáil’s Honor Mary Crowley from 1945 to 1966. Interestingly, three of Kerry’s female TDs from the past were elected following the retirement or death of their husband or father.

As stark as the absence of Kerry women from the Dáil and Seanad has been, the dearth of women from Kerry County Council in its 116-year history is shocking. Not a single woman was returned to the Council from the northern half of the county until the late 1960s. Just three women – Mary O’Donoghue (mother of John), Kit Ahern and Toireasa Ferris have chaired the authority since its foundation. Only five of the current 33-member Council are women. 

Female TDs from Kerry

Honor Mary Crowley (FF, Kerry South) 1945 – 1966

Breeda Moynihan Cronin (Lab, Kerry South) 1992 – 2007
Catherine (Kit) Ahern (FF, Kerry North) 1977 – 1981
Kathleen O’Connor (CnaP, Kerry North) 1956 – 1957

Female Senators from Kerry

Mary O'Donoghue

Máirín Quill (PD), a native of Kilgarvan
Marie Moloney (Lab), a member of the current Seanad



Female members of Kerry County Council

Lady Albina Lucy Broderick (SF) 1920 (Killorglin)

Kate Breen (Rep/FF) 1926 (Killarney)
Mary O’Shea (Ind) 1926 (Killorglin)
Honor Mary Crowley (FF) 1945 (Killarney)*
Mary O’Donoghue (FF) 1964 (Killorglin)*
Catherine (Kit) Ahern (FF) 1967 (Listowel)
Maeve Spring (Lab) 1982 (Tralee)*
Breeda Moynihan-Cronin (Lab) 1991 (Killarney)
Anne McEllistrim (FF) 2004 (Tralee)
Norma Foley (FF) 2004 (Tralee)
Toireasa Ferris (SF) 2003 (Tralee)*
Marie Moloney (Lab) 2009 (Killarney)
Gillian Wharton-Slattery (Lab) 2011 (Tralee)*
Dianne Nolan (SF) 2014 (Listowel)
Norma Moriarty (FF) 2014 (South & West)
Aoife Thornton (FG) 2014 (Listowel)

* Denotes co-opted

The first members of Kerry County Council - 1899

The first ever elections to Kerry County Council took place in April 1899 and its members are listed below. It's a list which may be incomplete but it is drawn from contemporary newspaper reports and Kerry County Council publications. As always, I'm looking for help from the public to help me identify anyone missing from the list and to provide more information about the first ever members of the county's local authority. Some names like Viscount Castlerosse and J.D. Crosbie will be familiar locally but others perhaps less so. If you have any information about any of the men who formed the first ever county council in Kerry, I would love to hear from you at politicsinkerry@gmail.com

Kerry County Council – Elected 6 April 1899

NAME                              ELECTORAL DIVISION

Baily, James                    Tralee         

Castlerosse, Viscount       Killarney

Crosbie, J. D.                  Ballyheigue  

Dodd, John H.                 Killorglin

Donovan, St. J. H. (Chair) Ardfert                           

Flavin, M.J.                     Sneem                            

Harty, J.                         Lisselton

Kearney, Thomas             Scartaglin             

Mahony, McDonogh          Caherciveen

McClure, R.                      Glenbeigh

McMahon, Michael           Milltown

McMahon, William           Listowel

Nolan, M. J. (Vice-chair)  Tarbert                 

O’Connell, M.S.               Lixnaw

O’Connor, J.K.                 Castleisland          

O’Donnell, Michael           Castlegregory

O’Donnell, Patrick            Kilgobbin

O’Donoghue, T.               Dingle

O’Driscoll, Alexander       Valentia                

O’Gorman, George          Aghadoe               

O’Sullivan, M.                  Kenmare

Sweeney, John                Headfort

 

CO-OPTED MEMBERS

Moriarty, David M.

Latchford, R.

MEMBERS OF THE GRAND JURY

Captain Magill

Trench, George F.
Blennerhassett, A.

CHAIRPERSONS OF RURAL DISTRICT COUNCILS

Doran, D. (Kenmare RDC)

O’Sullivan, Michael (Killarney RDC)
Roche, Jeremiah (Tralee RDC)

 

Another eminent politician from Kerry's past

Continuing my meanderings about prominent Kerry political figures from the past, this is a summary of the life of one of the most eminent, and oft forgotten, former Oireachtas members from Kerry.

Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha  (1883 - 1964) was, at various stages of his life, a republican activist, a prolific writer, chairman of Kerry County Council and a member of Seanad Éireann.

Best known for his very significant literary achievements, O Siochfhradha (Patrick Sugrue, pictured right) was a teacher from Dingle who worked as a civil servant and author and was a renowned advocate for the Irish language. His brother Mícheál O Siochfhradha was also well known as an Irish language enthusiast and writer.

Also known by the Irish name ‘An Seabhac’, he was active in the Irish Volunteers and was imprisoned a number of times for drilling. From 1922 to 1932 he worked with the Department of Education and became editor of the Educational Company of Ireland in 1932.

His literary output was extensive and includes an autobiographical ‘Jimín Mháire Thaidhg’ and many Irish language fiction pieces. He was also president of Oireachtas na Gaeilge for many years.

Ó Siochfhradha's political career began in 1920 when he was elected to Kerry County Council for the Tralee Electoral Division and he was chairman of the local authority from 1920 until the Council’s dissolution on 9 May 1923.

Eamon de Valera appointed O Siochfhradha to the Seanad on 22 February 1946 but he did not contest the 1948 Seanad election. He was re-appointed by de Valera following the general elections of 1951 and 1961.

O Siochfhradha lived for most of his life in Donnybrook in County Dublin and was involved in drama and worked with the Irish Manuscripts Commission for four years. He died in 1964. He was replaced in the Seanad by Kit Ahern from Ballybunion, who was later a Fianna Fáil TD for Kerry North.

The Sunday they opened the creamery for Dev in Listowel

This is another extract from my book on Kerry's political dynasties which includes a nice anecdote about the lengths the Fianna Fáil organisation went to in 1956 to entertain Eamon de Valera during a visit to Listowel.

(From Heirs to the Kingdom: Kerry's Political Dynasties, O'Brien Press, 2011)

Even five decades after his grandfather was first elected a TD, the 2009 local election campaign of Listowel town councillor, Jimmy Moloney brought home to him the importance of his family name on the doorsteps. Daniel ‘Danny Jim’ Moloney was elected to the Dáil for Fianna Fáil in Kerry North at the 1957 general election, topping the poll and becoming the only TD ever from that party to hail from Listowel, the second largest town in the constituency. His success made him one of just three Fianna Fáil TDs who served simultaneously in Kerry North with Thomas McEllistrim Snr, the others being Stephen Fuller (1937-43), sole survivor of the Ballyseedy atrocity during the Civil War[i] and Eamonn Kissane (1937-51).  

Dan Moloney's campaign leaflet
from 1956 (courtesy Cllr
Jimmy Moloney, Listowel)

Moloney had contested the 1956 by-election in Kerry North, which saw Kathleen O’Connor replace her father, Johnny Connor but his stay in the Dáil was for one term only. At the 1961 general election, Kerry North was changed from a four-seater to a three-seat constituency, which contributed in no small part to Moloney’s defeat. He went on to serve in the Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel until his death in 1963, on the day on which John F. Kennedy began his visit to Ireland.

His daughter, Kay Caball, was elected as a member of Tralee Urban District Council in 1979 and his grand-son, Jimmy Moloney was elected to Listowel Town Council in 2009 establishing yet another family dynasty in the county. Kay Caball was one of the TD’s two children who remembers the hustle and bustle of politics in Listowel in the 1950s. She recounts that like Timothy ‘Chub’ O’Connor TD[ii] sought to do for his native Killorglin in Kerry South, Dan Moloney always prioritised industry and employment for his area. She had moved to Tralee by the 1970s where she says her election to Tralee UDC had more to do with being involved in Fianna Fáil in the town than seeking election simply because she was her father’s daughter.  

Kay now lives in Limerick, where she is involved in Fianna Fáil as chairperson of the party in Limerick East. One of the abiding memories of her father’s time in politics was a visit from Éamon de Valera who called to the family home in the 1950s for lunch:

“I remember that when de Valera was Taoiseach, he came to the house for lunch on a Sunday and even though it was a Sunday, we got the local creamery opened up so that we could get fresh cream for the Taoiseach. And my abiding memory is of all the women fussing around in the kitchen getting things ready while all the men sat around the table with Dev. Women didn’t sit down with the men in those days.”

Caball’s nephew, Jimmy Moloney, the deputy mayor of Listowel in 2010/2011, acknowledges that even so long after his grandfather’s political career had ended, the former TD’s track record in Listowel was the most important factor in his election, especially in terms of achieving support from older voters who would have remembered Danny Jim:

“The name was definitely an asset. It helped the older vote come out, the people who would have known my grandfather. I remember one fellow on the campaign in 2009, he asked me to come around into the back garden and I thought it was going to be some problem about a wall or something. He had the old plaque from the Imperial Stag factory in the town, which is now closed, and it had on it that it was officially opened by Dan Moloney TD. So his name was a big help in my election.”

---

[i] Stephen Fuller was the sole survivor of what became known as the Ballyseedy Massacre, one of the most horrific incidents of the Civil War. In response to attacks in other parts of Kerry by anti-Treaty Republicans, Free State soldiers marched a group of Republican prisoners from Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee to Ballyseedy, a few miles outside the town in the early hours of 7 March 1923. There they tied nine prisoners to a land-mine which was detonated. Only Fuller, who was blown to safety by the force of the blast survived.

[ii] Timothy ‘Chub’ O’Connor was a Fianna Fáil TD for Kerry from 1961 to 1981. He stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the European Parliament in Munster in 1979 and lost his Dáil seat to Labour’s Michael Moynihan in 1981. O’Connor was a county councillor for the Killorglin Electoral Area from 1955 to 1979. He was succeeded for one term on the Council by his son, Teddy in 1979, who served for one term.