Your understanding of post War Irish politics is very poor.Originally Posted by turdsl
No one Government or Party changed the system - it happened over a series of Governments.
Browne was out of his depth in dealing with powerful vested interest groups and paid the price for the ham fisted way he went about trying to improve the lot of (as Factual might say) the less well off.
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
I agree completely, it took Dev all his life to make minmal changes and then only in cosultation with John Charles McQuaid,Of Coarse Browne took on the vested interests but he was alone,Thats to his credit, Dev and his comrades were much more clever,
The question was if Dev wasn't the most important Irish politican of the 20th Century, who was?John Charles McQuaid - give us a break!
There were two towering figures in Irish politics in the middle of that century, and they were Dev and McQuaid.
If one of the two name was a forbidden answer, then all that remains is the other.
You disagree, apparently. Then your rollie eye emoticon does not really contribute to the discussion.
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McQuaid a towering figure in Irish politics? Definitely in your small universe but I doubt if the majority of people would see it like that.
I think you vastly overestimate McQuaid's power and influence.
As I have stated before for most of his life he was part of the mainstream in this State
- it was only post Vatican II in 1963 that his views began to be seen by some of the liberal media commentators and 'Womens Lib' groups as backward and reactionary
- esp more so after the Humanae Vitae Encyclical of 1968.
IIRC he resigned as Archbishop of Dublin in 1970?
As the above makes obvious he was never the most senior member of the Catholic Hierarchy in Ireland.
Dev also consulted the leaders of the Anglican and Jewish congregations here when he framed the Constitution
- why is that hardly ever mentioned?
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
Because he quite patently didn't listen to what they had to say.
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But Trinity was granted special rights to appoint senators. Their schools were grant aided.
How do you know?
Europa Conventus Delenda Est
Do you not have a copy of the original constitution handy?
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It is very well-documented that portions of the constitution that relate to church-state relations, personal morality, family, women and social relations were effectively redacted word for word by McQuaid.
The concept of "vocationalism", which was to be the basis of the method of election of the Seanad (originally intended to be a far more powerful institution than it turned out to be) was something that Catholic political thinking had inherited from Italian and Spanish fascism. McQuaid was a prominent proponent of this concept.
The idea that McQuaid's attitudes were simply a reflection of the moral values of the time is frankly laughable.
And his formal position within the Irish Church does not have very much relationship with his real power, via his direct influence on politicians at the time -- notably, but not exclusively, with Dev himself -- and indirectly via the crosier of Damocles he held continuously over the political culture.
The mother and child scheme, for example, was a direct conflict between Nöel Browne and himself, one which, as we all know very well, he won scandalously easily.
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