When Liam Cosgrave lit up Kilmessan
The recent obituaries for the 97 year-old former taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, Liam Cosgrave, featured photographs of him and his brother, Michael, as children, accompanying their parents, WT and Louise Cosgrave to the opening of the Ardnacrushna power station on the river Shannon, in 1929.
Little did Liam Cosgrave realise at the time that 20 years later, in 1949, he would be performing an ESB-related event himself, as a young Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Daniel Morrissey.
On Monday 5th December 1949, Cosgrave inaugurated two major projects of the Kilmessan Rural Development Association – the switching on of the ESB rural electrification current, and the opening of Cormac Murray’s mineral factory.
A parliamentary secretary at the time was the equivalent of today’s junior minister, and Cosgrave found himself deputising a great deal for Morrissey, who suffered ill-health. The senior minister is named on the official menu from the dinner in the Station Hotel (later McBride’s Public House) on the occasion.
It was only the third place in Meath to be electrified, after Ratoath and Julianstown. The function took place in the Temperance Hall, which was lighted by candles, lanterns and paraffin lamps, and truth to tell, it was far from ineffective, the Meath Chronicle reported at the time.
“When Mr Cosgrave touched the switch which illuminated the hall with the new current, there was an outburst of applause which could, certainly, have been heard on Tara. Simultaneously, the floodlight system installed outside operated on the hall, church, parochial house and the factory building, and the whole scene was one to be remembered.”
After Fr Norris, the PP, imparted Benediction and invoked God’s blessing on the village, the parish, on the people and on their enterprises, the entourage moved to the hotel for a six-course dinner. Catered for by Mrs Kane, it consisted of soup, thick kidney, roast turkey, Limerick ham, seasoning, potato salad, beetroot and tomato, followed by trifle with cream, cheese and biscuits and coffee.
The attendance included the writer, Mary Lavin, whose husband, William Walsh, was a Fine Gael councillor in Meath who had acted as an election agent for Liam Cosgrave in Dublin, and who died during the 1954 general election campaign, having had to withdraw as a candidate due to ill-health.
Liam Cosgrave returned to Meath many timed is the following years, as Fine Gael leader for party political events, and as taoiseach. Always interested in hunting (mongrel foxes!) and racing, he was close to the Fingalls of Killeen Castle. In 1955, when he was Minister for External Affairs, he and his wife, Vera, attended the wedding of jockey Pat Taaffe to Molly Lyons in Navan. Vera’s father, Joe Osborne, bred Brown Lad, three-times Irish Grand National winner for Jim Dreaper under Tommy Carberry (twice) and Ger Dowd.
Liam Cosgrave was also responsible, through finance minister Richie Ryan, for providing the Irish Army Equitation School with funds to buy Rockbarton, the horse that was to become a showjumping legend with Derrypatrick’s Captain Con Power. Col Sean Daly from Dunshaughlin, who was chef d’equipe for the Irish showjumping team, was the link as a former aide-de-camp to Liam Cosgrave.
Cosgrave’s ‘National Coalition’ included two Meath ministers, Moynalty native Mark Clinton, who was a Dublin TD, in agriculture, and Duleek’s Jimmy Tully, a Labour TD for Meath, in local government. He also appointed John Bruton a junior minister.
While the 1977 election defeat is blamed on issues such as Cosgrave’s stance in the Paddy Donegan-Cearbhall O’Dalaigh controversy, in which the defence minister publicly called the president a ‘thundering disgrace’ and Jack Lynch’s giveaway manifesto, Jimmy Tully’s attempts at re-aligning constituencies also backfired for the government.
The ‘Tullymandering’ expected to see one Fine Gael, one Fianna Fail, and one Labour TD elected in three-seat constituencies – instead, Fianna Fail took two in many.
Relations between O’Dalaigh and Cosgrave were never great, and State Papers showed there was posturing over which of them would go to Rome in 1975 for the canonisation of St Oliver Plunkett – in the end, it was Cosgrave, a devout Catholic, who attended, and performed a reading at the ceremony. Archbishop Eamon Martin said last week it was one of the high points of Cosgrave’s life.