Garret Desmond FitzGerald (9 February 192619 May 2011) was an Irish Fine Gael politician, economist, and barrister who served twice as Taoiseach, serving from 1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1987. He served as Leader of Fine Gael from 1977 to 1987 and was twice Leader of the Opposition between 1977 and 1982; he was previously Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1973 to 1977. FitzGerald served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1969 to 1992 and was a Senator for the Industrial and Commercial Panel from 1965 to 1969.
He was the son of Desmond FitzGerald, the first foreign minister of the Irish Free State. At the time of his death, FitzGerald was president of the Institute of International and European Affairs and a columnist for The Irish Times, and had made occasional appearances on television programmes.
Early life Garret FitzGerald was born in Ballsbridge, Dublin, in 1926, son of Desmond FitzGerald and Mabel McConnell. His mother was involved in politics; it was through her that his father also became political. He had three elder brothers, Desmond (1911–1987), Pierce (1914–1986), and Fergus (1920–1983). His father was born and raised in London and was the Minister for External Affairs at the time of his son's birth. He was the son of a labourer who had emigrated from Skeheenarinky in County Tipperary, joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914, and fought during the 1916 Easter Rising. FitzGerald senior had been active in Sinn Féin during the Irish War of Independence and had been one of the founders of Cumann na nGaedheal. The party was formed to support the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which created the Irish Free State.
Although a senior figure on the pro-treaty side of Ireland's political divide, FitzGerald senior had remained friendly with anti-Treaty republicans, such as Belfast man Seán MacEntee, a minister in Éamon de Valera's government and father-in-law of Conor Cruise O'Brien. The families of Patrick McGilligan and Ernest Blythe were also frequent visitors to the FitzGerald household. FitzGerald's mother, the former Mabel Washington McConnell, was a nationalist and republican of Ulster Protestant descent. However, later in life she converted to Catholicism. Her son would later describe his political objective as the creation of a pluralist Ireland where the northern Protestants of his mother's family tradition and the southern Catholics of his father's could feel equally at home.
FitzGerald was educated at the Jesuit Belvedere College and University College Dublin (UCD), from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in history, French and Spanish in 1946, later returning to complete a PhD in economics which he obtained in 1968; his doctoral thesis was published the following year, titled Planning in Ireland. He was deeply interested in the politics of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. A bright student who counted among his contemporaries in UCD his future political rival, Charles Haughey, who also knew Joan O'Farrell (1923–1999), a Liverpool-born fellow student, whom FitzGerald married in 1947. Their children were John, Mary, and Mark.
Following his university education, in 1947, he started working with Aer Lingus, the state airline of Ireland, and became an authority on the strategic economic planning of transport. During this time, he wrote many newspaper articles, was the Irish correspondent for British magazine The Economist, and was encouraged to write on National Accounts and economics by the features editor in the Irish Times. He remained with Aer Lingus until 1958; the following year, after undertaking a study of the economics of Irish industry at Trinity College Dublin, he became a lecturer in economics at UCD.
FitzGerald qualified as a barrister, from the King's Inns of Ireland, and spoke French fluently.
Early political life FitzGerald was eager to enter politics. Despite his pro-Treaty roots, several members of Fianna Fáil, including Charles Haughey and Michael Yeats, suggested that he should join that party. Ultimately, FitzGerald made his entry into party politics under the banner of Fine Gael, of which his father had been a founding member. He attached himself to the party's liberal wing, which rallied around the Just Society programme written by Declan Costello. FitzGerald was elected to Seanad Éireann for the Industrial and Commercial Panel in 1965 and soon built up his political profile. FitzGerald was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1969 general election, for the Dublin South-East constituency, the same year he obtained his PhD for a thesis later published under the title "Planning in Ireland". He became an important figure almost immediately in the parliamentary party, and his liberal ideas were seen as a counterweight to the conservative leader, Liam Cosgrave. The difference in political outlook and FitzGerald's ambitions for the Fine Gael leadership resulted in profound tensions between the two men. In his leadership address to the 1972 Fine Gael Ardfheis in Cork, Cosgrave referred to the "mongrel foxes" who should be rooted out of the party, a reference seen by many as an attack on FitzGerald's efforts to unseat him as leader.
FitzGerald was an opponent of the US bombing of North Vietnam.
Minister for Foreign Affairs (1973–1977)
After the 1973 general election, Fine Gael entered office in a coalition government with the Labour Party, with Liam Cosgrave as Taoiseach. FitzGerald hoped that he would take over as Minister for Finance, particularly after a good performance in a pre-election debate with the then Minister for Finance George Colley. However, the position went to Richie Ryan, with FitzGerald becoming Minister for Foreign Affairs. FitzGerald's father had held that same post in a government led by Liam Cosgrave's father W. T. Cosgrave, fifty years earlier. His appointment to Iveagh House (the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs) would have a significant effect on FitzGerald's career and the future of Fine Gael. Cosgrave was suspicious of FitzGerald's liberal ideas and believed that he had designs on the leadership. During his period at Foreign Affairs, FitzGerald developed a good relationship with Liam Cosgrave, and all the tension between them in opposition disappeared.
The minister's role had changed substantially since his father's day. Ireland was no longer a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, but had in 1973 joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the organisation which would later become the European Union (EU). FitzGerald, firmly ensconced as Foreign Minister, was free from any blame due to other Ministers' mishandling of the economy. If anything, his tenure at the Department of Foreign Affairs helped him eventually achieve the party's leadership. His innovative views, energy and fluency in French won him – and through him, Ireland – a status in European affairs far exceeding the country's size and ensured that the first Irish Presidency of the European Council in 1975 was a noted success.
FitzGerald's policy towards church-state relations, however, brought him into a confrontation with the Roman Catholic church, whose "special position" in the Republic had been enshrined in the constitution until the Referendum of December 1972. FitzGerald, in 1973, met the Cardinal Secretary of State, Agostino Casaroli, and proposed to modify the Republic's Constitution further to remove laws with overtly Catholic foundations, such as the bans on divorce and contraception, as well as to relax the public stigmas in Northern Ireland towards mixed religious marriages and integrated education. Casaroli initially seemed receptive, and the government formally submitted the proposal to the Vatican. FitzGerald's vision caused great consternation among the church's hierarchy, however, and in 1977, Pope Paul VI personally met with FitzGerald to tell him that "Ireland was a Catholic country – perhaps the only one left – and it should stay that way. Laws should not be changed in any way that would make the country less Catholic."
Leadership of Fine Gael In 1977, the National Coalition of Fine Gael and Labour suffered a disastrous electoral defeat in the general election. Liam Cosgrave resigned as party leader, and FitzGerald was chosen by acclamation to succeed him. In his new role as Leader of the Opposition and party leader, he set about modernising and revitalising Fine Gael. He immediately appointed a General-Secretary to oversee all of this, a tactic copied from Fianna Fáil. Under FitzGerald, Fine Gael experienced a rapid rise in support and popularity. After the November 1982 election, it held only five seats fewer than Fianna Fáil (the parties' closest-ever margin until 2011; at times Fianna Fáil was far larger, on one occasion well over twice as large), with Fine Gael in the Oireachtas (i.e. including the Seanad) larger than Fianna Fáil, which had been the dominant force in Irish politics for 40 years.
Taoiseach (1981–1982)
By the time of the 1981 general election, Fine Gael had a party machine that could compete with Fianna Fáil. The party won 65 seats and formed a minority coalition government with the Labour Party and the support of several Independent TDs. FitzGerald was appointed as Taoiseach on 30 June 1981. FitzGerald excluded Richie Ryan, Richard Burke and Tom O'Donnell, former Fine Gael stalwarts, from the cabinet.
Two fundamental problems faced FitzGerald during his first period: Northern Ireland and the worsening economic situation. A protest march in support of the H-Block hunger strikers in July 1981 was harshly dealt with by FitzGerald. On one occasion where he met with relatives of the hunger strikers, he refused to meet the family of Bobby Sands, an MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone and O/C of the Provisional IRA hunger strikers, and the first to die on this strike, along with the sister of Raymond McCreesh, who had died on 21 May. During the meeting, two of Thomas McElwee's sisters, Mary and Nora, broke down and left. Mary McElwee told the media outside that "he's doing nothing, he's asking for suggestions". FitzGerald then ordered Gardaí to remove the families from the meeting. FitzGerald's response was, in the words of Eamonn Sweeney, to "lay all the blame for the hunger strikers on the republican movement and to suggest an immediate unilateral end to their military campaign".
The economic crisis was also much worse than FitzGerald had feared. Fine Gael had to scrap its plans for tax cuts in the run-up to the election, and a draconian mid-year budget was introduced almost immediately. The July budget seemed exceptionally austere for a government dependent on Independent TDs support. The second budget introduced by John Bruton led to the government's defeat in the Dáil on the evening of 27 January 1982.
In light of this loss of supply, FitzGerald went to Áras an Uachtaráin to request a dissolution of the Dáil from the president, Patrick Hillery. The president may refuse to grant a dissolution when it was advised by a Taoiseach who has "ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann". When FitzGerald got there, he was informed that senior opposition figures (and some Independent TDs), including the Opposition leader (and former Taoiseach) Charles Haughey, Brian Lenihan and Sylvester Barrett, had made a series of telephone calls demanding that Hillery refuse the dissolution. Had Hillery done so, it would have forced FitzGerald's resignation as Taoiseach and enabled the Dáil to nominate someone else for the post—presumably Haughey. Hillery is said to have angrily rejected such pressure, regarding it as gross misconduct. He granted FitzGerald the dissolution.