Sir, – In 1941 Éamon de Valera decided to proscribe the use of the designation “Royal” from the various societies in the State. My father (Maurice MacGonigal RHA) and Dermod O’Brien went to see Dev with Jim Ryan and Seán Lemass.
My father argued that the use of the word was like Dev’s use of an “empty formula” when he had entered Dáil Eireann in 1925. It served a purpose. In the use of the word Royal for learned, artistic, medical and agricultural societies these had been taken on by Irish people to open up their worlds to other collegial interests. He insisted that it still held for artists, thinkers, surgeons and farmers.
My father was a lifelong republican. He considered that removing the word royal was to unpick the works all those dead generations who had laboured for a better future for Ireland in using such formulaic processes in the furtherance of their works. Also that as a republican to destroy connections useful to artists, farmers, historians and doctors was the suggestion of Lilliputions and should not happen and that the reality of empty formulas was just that.
In the wider context of a united Ireland, large sections of opinion would be dismayed should removal of the word be attempted and an empty formula could become something else.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
We share this island with others, we are Europeans with many reigning royal families in our midst. Time to grow up.
– Yours etc,
CIARÁN MACGONIGAL,
Edgeworthstown,
Co Longford.