Garret at the ECJ

Garret FitzGerald
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I was checking through some old photos when I came across this one. I suspected it was in Luxembourg but couldn't be quite sure. My friend, former colleague, and current Luxembourg resident, Vivion Mulcahy, checked it out for me and Luxembourg it is.

It was taken in 1966/7 during an EU study trip to Brussels and Luxembourg. The location is the Place d'Armes in the centre of the city and the building in the background then housed part of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which has since moved to the Kirchberg.

Plaque on the Cercle Municipal building
Photo: Vivion Mulcahy

The location has many appropriate resonances, one of which is evoked by the plaque on the building which welcomes the city's liberators at the end of WWII, along with the return of the Luxembourg monarchy, so to speak. (It's a Duchy.)

Frieze depicting granting of the Citizens' Charter
Photo: Vivion Mulcahy

At an earlier stage the building housed the city administration and the frieze above the arches depicts the granting of the Charter of Emancipation in 1244 which guaranteed the citizens rights and duties towards the nobility.

UCD MA in European Studies class Luxembourg

This is our MA class during the Luxembourg visit. I don't remember what the building was but if anyone recognises/remembers it, let me know.

Garret was a Senator (member of Seanad Éireann) at the time. He was subsequently Foreign Minister (1973-7) and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) twice (1981-2 & 1982-7). He died 19 May 2011.

I have recounted some anecdotes from 1966/7 here.

Electoral Ephemera

General Election 1969
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Some people may remember the 1969 general election for its red scare, including the "Reds under the Bed" rantings of Kevin Boland and a not insignificant number of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. The Labour Party and their Moscow masters. Seems funny now, but it may well have kept some of the troop in line.

General Election 1969

Local Elections 1967
Church Road, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin

Return Visit

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As a suitably attired Micheal D is set to pay the Queen a visit, some few reflections are in order.

This will be the first official visit of an Irish president to the British monarch.

It is in return for the Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011.

That visit was a major success, and, leaving aside the Queen's few words of Gaeilge, which probably meant no more than did her son's use of Welsh at his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969, the highlight for me was her laying of a wreath in the memorial gardens in Parnell Square. This was a British monarch honouring those who gave their lives opposing her predecessors. Surely a significant moment.

At that time Sinn Féin refused to participate, but now Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister in the NI administration, will accept an invitation to attend a banquet in Windsor Castle. Sure to be another significant moment.

Michael D is not the first President of Ireland to visit Britain while in office. That honour goes to Mary Robinson in the spring of 1991. Her visit was not an official one and was not to the British monarch. She had been invited by Jacques Attali to attend the inauguration of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as she had been one of the adjudicators in the competition for a bank logo.

That turned out to be her first trip outside the country since her election as president and it was conceded in the teeth of serious opposition by Government (who have the last say in these matters).

Charlie Haughey, then Taoiseach, was appalled at her election as president, and even more appalled by her promise to turn the office into a more significant one that theretofore. As a result he opposed almost anything she wanted to do, and the idea of letting her loose on the British "mainland", where she might get up to God knows what sort of mischief, was just an "appalling vista".

However he couldn't keep her bottled up for ever, so he reluctantly agreed to let her attend the inauguration, knowing that she also intended to address the Irish immigrant community in London. For safety's sake he sent a plane load of officials along to keep an eye on her (relatively speaking, that is).

Anyway, she got away with it, and continued to raise the profile of her office over the remainder of her tenure. (Though the height of that office so far must be the then President Patrick Hillery's refusal, in 1982, to accede to Charlie Haughey's request to block Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald's resignation and so indirectly install Haughey as Taoiseach.)

I was not involved directly in Mary Robinson's visit, except for getting her bounced off a lunch list which Attali had drawn up. He had a fixation on dealing with Heads of State where possible. The lunch, which was entertained by Rostropovich in person, was billed as a working lunch for EBRD Governors and as she was not in that category I had to make sure that it was Albert Reynolds, then Irish governor, who was invited.

Amazing the things you do for your country.

Some more EBRD reminisences

Garret FitzGerald

Garret was one of the driving forces behind the first MA in European Studies in UCD in 1966/7. And he set about implementing the new course with gusto. This was well before Ireland joined the EEC. In fact it was more than a year before de Gaulle (again) refused us entry (along with the UK, Denmark and Norway).

Garret had a long and enthusiastic interest in Europe and he was on the European Parliament's mailing list. He used to come into class (there were only about 6 of us, as I recall) with big bundles of EP reports under his arm which had just arrived in his morning post. He plonked these on the table and we sifted through them looking for nuggets on which to base our papers. The system worked well. We got a profusion of reliable sources and he got his reports sorted. A forerunner of distributed computing.

He may also have made history in the Berlaymont (Commission HQ in Brussels) during the same course. He had taken us on a study trip to the Commission and was in full flight at one of our briefings, quizzing the Commission official giving the briefing. The official was waffling all over the place and I figured there was nothing useful to learn from him, so I switched over to the French interpretation. As Garret, whose brain constantly outran his tongue, gushed on, the interpreter faltered and eventually lapsed into silence.

"I am sorry but I cannot keep up with this speaker", she said.

Incidentally, at the end of the session, the Commission official apologised for his disorganised presentation and responses, claiming he had hit his head on the side of the swimming pool when playing with his children over the weekend. We all felt very sorry for him until we later learned that this was a story he rehearsed on a regular basis to excuse his poor performance.

Garret had two great qualities for a teacher: great enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity, both of which he shared with his students.

A fault was his assumption that everyone was as interested in minute details as he was himself. And he wasn't the greatest delegator in the world. Very much a hands on manager which, when he was Taoiseach, led to difficulties in his dealings with the Civil Service and to some of the longest Cabinet meetings in the history of the State.

He was a conviction politician and, unlike many of his contemporaries, was conscious of the wider national interest in his dealings both at home and abroad. He will be sadly missed, not only by his family and friends, but by the country, which will be the poorer for his going.

It's a pity he missed his date with the Queen, but it now appears he had a more pressing appointment.

RIP

Lying in State