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THE WHITE HOUSE believed the election of Patrick Hillery to Áras an Uachtaráin in 1976 could mean the role of President would “no longer be considered ‘above politics’”.
According to a cable released by Wikileaks this week, Ambassador Walter Curley said the accession of Hillery was a “plus for Fianna Fáil” but a “definite minus” for the governing coalition.
Both Labour and Fine Gael failed to nominate a candidate following the resignation of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh. He stepped down after the Minister for Defence Paddy Donegan launched a verbal attack against him in front of a number of people, including one journalist. He allegedly called the head of State a “thundering disgrace”, insinuating he had been disloyal to Ireland.
In a note to the US Department of State, which was also sent to a number of embassies in Europe and NATO headquarters, Curley said:
“Hillery accedes to a position which was largely ceremonial prior to Ó Dálaigh’s use of the presidential power to refer bills to the Supreme Court.
The position has now been enhanced in importance but politicised somewhat. Election of an active, long-time partisan politician, who is not an ‘elder statesman’ may well mean that the president can no longer be considered ‘above politics’. Although the new role of presidency will depend very much on how Hillery conducts himself on the job.
According to the US administration, the Liam Cosgrave-led government was “the loser in all of this”.
“First, the whole resignation imbroglio did not enhance the government’s image. Then, by coincidence, Hillery announced that he would not be reappointed to his job as [EU] Commissioner on the day that Ó Dálaigh resigned. If Hillery had been reappointed then, he would not have accepted the presidency.
“Hillery was a popular commissioner and most Irish thought he should have been reappointed, especially since it appears that the choice of his replacement (probably Education Minister Burke) is being made on strictly political grounds. Now, of course, the current talk is that ‘Cosgrave made Hillery President by accident’.”
Another ramification of the appointment, according to Curley, was Jack Lynch securing his position as head of Fianna Fáil.
“Hillery would have been a good rallying point for those who want to get rid of Lynch, ” he wrote. “And the resulting disunity would have weakened the party. Now it will go into an election united behind Lynch.”
Indeed, Fianna Fáil went on to win the 1977 election and Lynch was installed as Taoiseach for the second time.
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Credit where due well done although very difficult on families where there is no power. Thankfully we dont get too many storms like the few we had. Anyone see the news the UK still in bits far worse than us.
Still out in rear cross co tipp.fair play to esb networks though cant be easy working true such a backlog
Thank you for keeping this story in peoples mind.So many still have with no idea of when they will be switched back on.
Day 6 without power and im one of those isolated pockets ive been told. Probably be end of week before connection. Im going to go crazy!
A big well done to all the ESB crew, but surely they will consider putting electricity wires down under ground
Think about it….
There are 10s of thousands of KMs of local electricity cabling around the country.
How do you even begin to do that?
It would cost a biblical amount of money.
Or at least cutting back/removing of trees near power lines. A job for Coillte I would think.
There is no utility on Earth that has its rural distribution lines underground for one simple reason: cost. Undergrounding overhead lines would cost many multiples of the overhead cost and this would have to be passed on to the consumer. Our electricity bills are high enough as they are – no one wants to see them tripled, quadrupled or whatever. If it were a realistic option you’d think a place like Florida which suffers multiple major outages every year because of hurricanes would have done it years ago, but no: they have overhead lines as well. Nor would it necessarily result in the elimination of faults – they would still occur due to flooding, cable failures, dig-ins and the like. And it would take longer to repair or replace them. There would also be huge delays in connecting new properties to the network caused by the time involved in digging the trenches, getting permission from landowners and so forth. Nor of course would it be remotely realistic to initiate a programme of replacing the existing network of overhead lines with underground ones. All in all, on the face of it, it sounds like a reasonable proposition but when you examine it deeper it becomes a pipe-dream.
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