Ireland fared well under Lemass, anniversary event told

IRELAND did well economically in the 1960s under Seán Lemass but fared worse than the EU 15 average, and better only than Britain, a seminar to mark the 50th anniversary of his election as taoiseach was told.

Prof Mary Daly, principal of UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies, said the Lemass years “are a time of massive change, energy and activity”. However, while Ireland fared better than Britain, it did worse than all other OECD economies “and significantly worse than other developing economies such as Greece, Spain and Portugal”.

She said “foreign investment was bringing in new jobs, but they were just about compensating for industrial jobs that were disappearing”.

Ireland performed poorly in attracting foreign direct investment compared with other European countries and especially with Northern Ireland because Lemass failed to take “some tough decisions” such as dealing with the proliferation of development agencies that were fragmented in their efforts, inefficient and lacking in focus. The agencies did not develop a professional role until the late 1960s.

Prof Daly highlighted that “one of Lemass’s most important contributions was his skill at talking about economic progress long before there was any real evidence of sustained economic growth . . . This Irish version of Macmillan’s ‘you never had it so good’ was designed to boost national and international confidence”.

Lemass had called for an “intelligent partnership between management and labour in order to achieve economic progress”. But “employers and unions had taken Lemass’s message that the economy was progressing too much to heart” and in 1961 there was a record number of strikes.

Diarmuid Ferriter, UCD professor of modern Irish history, said Lemass was being presented as the man who brought about modern Ireland but “it’s more complicated than that”.

He was not always the “most effective manager of his Cabinet colleagues and he was not always in as much control as he would have liked”. He believed that Lemass “instinctively had a pro-worker bias, but he could be ruthless and authoritarian”.

Former taoiseach Garret Fitz-Gerald, who was in the audience, said the department of industry and commerce remained “extremely intransigent” and protectionist throughout the era. He said government departments develop “philosophies” that become embedded and remain, even when they are no longer useful.

Dr John Walsh of TCD’s Centre for Contemporary History said free post-primary schooling would not have happened without the support of Lemass, who identified education as “the most urgent national priority”.

Dr Walsh said then minister for education Donogh O’Malley announced a radical change in education policy in 1966 with minimal consultation, even with the taoiseach, for free post-primary schooling. But “O’Malley’s initiative made rapid progress at least in part because education had already been identified as the most urgent national priority in the allocation of scarce resources by Lemass himself”.