Kevin Boland, who died on September 23rd aged 83, will best be remembered as the Fianna Fβil minister who resigned from the Cabinet at the height of the 1970 arms crisis. He had been appointed a minister by Eamon de Valera on his first day in the Dβil, in 1957, and was retained in successive cabinets during the party's unbroken period in power throughout the 1960s.
Dogged and sometimes quick-tempered, his rugged honesty and diehard belief in what he regarded as traditional Fianna Fβil republicanism, gained him admirers but little electoral support. He continued to be outspoken and controversial until relatively recently.
His resignation from the Cabinet was followed by his departure from Fianna Fβil and the Dβil and the founding of a new party, Aontacht ╔ireann, which foundered. The two ministers sacked by Jack Lynch for allegedly illegally importing arms, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, were acquitted by the courts and saw their careers prosper in different ways.
Haughey became Taoiseach nine years later, and while Blaney never served in government again, he retained his Dβil seat and carved a career in the European Parliament. Kevin Boland continued to contribute to political debate from the sidelines, but he had little real influence.
He did not conceal his bitter disappointment at the failure of Blaney and Haughey to join his new party. He later recalled going to Kinsealy to see Haughey, then in the political wilderness, to persuade him to leave Fianna Fβil. When he refused, Kevin Boland accused him of poor judgment caused by an extravagant lifestyle. He recalled Haughey replying: "The difference between you and me, Kevin, is that you fight for the sake of fighting, while I fight to win."
Kevin Boland was born in Dublin in October, 1917, the second son of Gerald Boland, a former minister for justice, a founding member of Fianna Fβil and close associate of de Valera. He was a nephew of Harry Boland, a leading figure in the War of Independence.
After a career in the Army and as an engineer, he was elected to the Dβil for the Dublin South County constituency in the 1957 election and appointed minister for defence. He later served as minister for social welfare under Seβn Lemass and minister for local government and social welfare under Lynch.
When he had responsibility for local government, he was embroiled in controversy, accusing some of those in favour of retaining Georgian Dublin as "belted earls". As the Northern Troubles escalated in the late 1960s, there were deep divisions within the Cabinet on policy. He resigned verbally at a Cabinet meeting but delayed it after talking to President de Valera. He later recalled he thought his membership of the Cabinet untenable in August, 1969.
"The essential requirement to make peace possible was for the British to make a decision to end the Union. I found the Government as a whole, and the Taoiseach in particular, opposed to this view." Lynch's sacking of Haughey and Blaney, revealed in a government statement at 2.50 a.m. on May 6th, 1970, was followed by Kevin Boland's resignation. He lost the Fianna Fβil whip in June, 1970, when he refused to withdraw charges of "treachery" and "co-operation with the enemy" against Lynch. Later in the month, he resigned as joint honorary secretary of the party and from its national executive.
His final break with the Dβil came the following November when he resigned his seat rather than vote confidence in Lynch and his government. He was never to return as a TD, having later failed to get elected as an Aontacht ╔ireann and Independent candidate.
About 1,100 delegates attended the launch of the new party, in Dublin, in September, 1971. Kevin Boland, as its chairman, dedicated himself to the immediate task of supporting "in every way possible the risen people of the Six Counties".
The party failed to make any impact in the 1973 general election, when Fianna Fβil narrowly lost power to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.
He continued to express his views, in letters to newspapers and public speeches, and unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the Sunningdale Agreement in the 1970s. In November 1975, he bitterly attacked the Dβil's bipartisan policy on the North. He said the only way the deadlock of political confrontation in Northern Ireland could be broken, and civil war averted, was through the British government making a declaration of intent to withdraw completely on a future date.
But not many voters were listening, and the party, deprived of the political oxygen of Dβil representation, faded away. He retained a personal profile throughout the 1980s and 1990s on republican issues. In 1995, he opposed the visit of Prince Charles to Ireland, describing it as "sinister" and part of a move aimed at bringing Ireland back into the UK.
Reviewing Kevin Boland's book, Up Dev, in 1977, in the aftermath of the Lynch-led Fianna Fβil 20-seat majority, the journalist John Healy, who had observed the author's career over several years, wrote: "Only the Bolands, dead uncle, dead father and living son, kept the Faith. Kevin sees himself as the Northern constant star in a political world of chicanery and deceit and double-dealing. He is not priggish about it; there is an honest stupidity about it which forces you to say that politics was the last vocation that Kevin Boland should have considered.
"And if he doesn't understand the art of politics, how then can he understand Fianna Fβil - or the people who gave his former party 84 seats?"
Kevin Boland is survived by his wife Cecilia, sons, Breandβn and Fachtna, daughters, S∅le and Cβitl∅n, brothers, Annraoi and Ciarβn and sisters, Eileen and Nuala.
Kevin Boland: born, 1917; died, September 2001