Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh

Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was an Irish barrister, judge and Fianna Fáil politician who served as the president of Ireland from December 1974 to October 1976. Following a breakdown in relations with the government intensified by remarks made by a senior minister, he was the first president of Ireland to resign from office.
A trained barrister and accomplished scholar of Irish literature and language, Ó Dálaigh became Éamon de Valera's protégé in the 1930s. He was appointed Attorney General in 1946 and a Supreme Court justice in 1953, the youngest-ever holder of either position at the time. He was promoted to Chief Justice of Ireland in 1961, and presided over a period of greater assertiveness on the part of the Irish judiciary. In 1973, he became the first Irish judge to sit on the European Court of Justice.
Ó Dálaigh became President of Ireland unexpectedly following the death of Erskine Childers. Growing conflict with the National Coalition government spilled out into open acrimony following hostile comments by defence minister Paddy Donegan. This led to Ó Dálaigh's resignation after twenty-two months in office. His departure and the circumstances around it remain a subject of controversy.

Early life

Carroll O'Daly, the second of four children, was born on 12 February 1911, in Bray, County Wicklow. His father, Richard O'Daly, was the manager of a fish shop. His mother was Úna Thornton, an Irish speaker, cultural nationalist and member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann. His uncle, Joe Thornton, was a participant in the Battle of Ashbourne during the Easter Rising. Ó Dálaigh used the English form of his name during his legal career and it sometimes appeared in overseas publications during his presidency.
Ó Dálaigh had an elder brother, Aonghus, and two younger sisters, Úna and Nuala. He went to St. Cronan's Boys National School and in Ring, County Waterford. Following the death of his father when Ó Dálaigh was nine years old, his family moved to Dublin and he studied at Synge Street CBS. At Synge Street, Aonghus and Cearbhall were proficient Irish speakers and supporters of Irish culture, reportedly wearing "saffron kilts, saffron shawls and black tunics" to school.
While attending University College Dublin, Ó Dálaigh served as auditor of An Cumann Gaelach and the Literary and Historical Society. He claimed that his election as Auditor of the L&H was arranged by a fellow student, Brian O'Nolan, who agreed with his support for the rights of hecklers. He graduated with a B.A. in Celtic Studies in 1931, having studied under Douglas Hyde.
He served as Irish language editor of The Irish Press, a newspaper then owned by Éamon de Valera, from 1931 to 1940. Ó Dálaigh became a protégé of de Valera, due to their shared passion for the Irish language, and he was regarded internationally as an expert on Irish-language literature. Ó Dálaigh's brother Aonghus also worked at the Irish Press, serving as the newspaper's librarian until his death in 1967.
In 1934, Ó Dálaigh married Máirín Nic Dhiarmada, a fellow student at UCD he had come to know through the Literary and Historical Society, Conradh na Gaeilge and the hillwalking club. They had no children.

Legal and political career

Ó Dálaigh was conferred with the degree of barrister-at-law by King's Inns and called to the bar in 1934, becoming a senior counsel in 1944. Although his performance as a barrister made little impact, he was active in politics, serving on Fianna Fáil's National Executive in the 1930s.
Following the appointment of Kevin Dixon as a judge of the High Court in 1946, Ó Dalaigh was chosen by Éamon de Valera to replace him as Attorney General. Aged thirty-five, he was the youngest Attorney General in Irish history at that time. The nationalist periodical The Leader hailed Ó Dálaigh's appointment, saying: "He is a member of the first generation to grow to manhood under the Irish flag; and he is the kind of Irishman whom we may hope that political freedom and the process of cultural regeneration will ultimately produce in numbers."
As Attorney General, Ó Dálaigh advised the government that membership of the United Nations would compel Ireland to participate in war at the behest of the Security Council, a fact which conflicted with the role of Dáil Éireann in declaring war in the Constitution of Ireland. However, a Soviet veto of Irish membership rendered these concerns academic. In 1947, Ó Dálaigh also gave advice which ended the arrangement whereby wireless stations at Malin Head and Valentia Island were presumed to be under the control of the British Post Office, a provision of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which he said ceased to apply legally in 1938.
At the 1948 general election, he contested Dublin South-West as a Fianna Fáil candidate, but was eliminated on the ninth count. Fianna Fáil lost the election, with Ó Dalaigh leaving the position of Attorney General. In 1951, he was unsuccessful again in winning a Dáil seat, but Fianna Fáil returned to power and he was re-appointed as Attorney General, serving until 1953. During this period, Ó Dálaigh also contested two elections to Seanad Éireann without success.

Judicial career

In 1953, aged 42, Ó Dálaigh was nominated by Éamon de Valera as the youngest-ever justice of the Supreme Court, and appointed by President Seán T. O'Kelly. Ronan Keane notes that although Ó Dálaigh had limited experience as a barrister, he was well-liked as a justice for his courtesy and respected for the clarity of his analysis. He also served on government commissions into taxation and higher education in the 1950s and 1960s.
While serving as a justice, Ó Dálaigh remained active in the arts community, serving as Chair of the Cultural Relations Committee, a body established by the Department of Foreign Affairs to promote Irish culture abroad. An urban legend suggests that ÓDálaigh and his friend, the actor Cyril Cusack, picketed the Dublin launch of Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People in 1959, over the film's perceived stereotyping of Irish people. However, there is no known contemporary reference to this having occurred. He also served as vice president of the Dublin Theatre Festival during this period.
In 1961, he was appointed to replace Conor Maguire as Chief Justice of Ireland by President de Valera, on the nomination of Taoiseach Seán Lemass. The appointment was controversial in legal circles, especially with Ó Dálaigh's fellow justice Cecil Lavery, who believed that as the senior judge on the court, he should have been nominated. Seán Lemass observed that he hoped the appointment of Ó Dálaigh, and of 43-year-old Brian Walsh to replace him as an ordinary justice, would lead to the Irish Supreme Court taking on a more interventionist and liberal character, like its American counterpart.
Under Ó Dálaigh, the Supreme Court embarked on a new direction in the 1960s, seeking to uphold fundamental rights and showing more willingness to challenge the government than previously. In 1965, Ó Dálaigh issued a judgement confirming a High Court ruling stating that personal rights guaranteed by the constitution extended beyond those explicitly referred to in the text to include further "unenumerated rights", an act which dramatically widened the scope for the judiciary to challenge legislation. In State v. Ryan the court deemed unconstitutional an attempt by the Garda Síochána to extradite a citizen to Britain without first giving him the opportunity to challenge the decision. Ó Dálaigh declared:

It was not the intention of the Constitution in guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the citizen that these rights should be set at nought or circumvented. The intention was that rights of substance were being assured to the individual and that the Courts were the custodians of these rights. As a necessary corollary, it follows that no one can with impunity set these rights at nought or circumvent them, and the Courts’ powers in this regard are as ample as the defence of the Constitution requires.

During this period, the Supreme Court also prohibited the use of evidence obtained by unconstitutional means, forbade the detention of an accused person pending trial on the grounds that they might commit offences, and insisted that the judiciary and not the executive should decide whether evidence should be withheld from a court. In the 1971 case of Re Haughey, the Supreme Court under Ó Dálaigh ruled that the Dáil Public Accounts Committee had acted unconstitutionally by not using fair procedures while interrogating Jock Haughey, the brother of Charles Haughey, over alleged arms smuggling.
When Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominated ÓDálaigh as Ireland's first judge on the European Court of Justice. Ó Dálaigh is reported to have said that he accepted the appointment because he believed he had been on the Supreme Court long enough, and was wary of the possibility that the executive might roll back some of his decisions. Ó Dálaigh, who spoke French and Italian in addition to Irish and English, adapted well to his posting in Luxembourg, though it turned out to be short lived.

President of Ireland

The sudden death of President Erskine Hamilton Childers on 17 November 1974 created an unexpected vacancy, and a dilemma for the major political parties: after a general election and presidential election in 1973, they did not want the expense of another campaign. Four names were proposed by the National Coalition government as non-partisan replacements: Rita Childers, the widow of the late president; Con Cremin, former permanent representative at the United Nations; Donal Keenan, President of the Gaelic Athletic Association; and T. K. Whitaker, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. These proposals were rejected by the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, who demanded that a member of their party be nominated to contest the election. After Jack Lynch and George Colley declined to stand, Fianna Fáil proposed Ó Dálaigh as a compromise candidate. On 30 November, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Party agreed to support him, effectively ensuring his election without a contest.
An Irish Independent editorial expressed disappointment at the lack of a popular mandate for the new president, but praised Ó Dálaigh for his breadth of interests outside the legal field, suggesting these made him a suitable head of state. The Irish Times echoed these sentiments, remarking that Ó Dálaigh's "personality has not been dehydrated by his profession". He was sworn in as president at Dublin Castle on 19 December 1974. His inauguration was attended by serving politicians from the government and opposition, former president de Valera and former Taoiseach John A. Costello, religious figures and various others, including Seán MacBride. In his inaugural address, he spoke in Irish, English and French, declaring:

The press, in recent days, have repeatedly asked me: 'What, Mr President-elect, is your policy going to be as President?' I have invariably answered – and, I think, correctly – that presidents, under the Irish Constitution, don't have policies. But perhaps a president can have a theme. If he can, then I have found the answer for my friends of the press. The theme of my septennat, más cead sin le Dia, will again be that of my early student days: Community Spirit. How sorely needed in part of this strife-torn island, with the new European dimension added, and, never forgetting, our brothers of the Third World.

In 1975, Ó Dálaigh became the first Common Market head of state to make an official visit to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. Ó Dálaigh retained an interest in the arts as president: when Tom Murphy's play The Sanctuary Lamp had its first performance at the Abbey Theatre in 1975, the audience objected to its depiction of the clergy. Ó Dálaigh, who had been in the audience, took to the stage after the performance to defend the playwright, calling the play "one of the great Irish dramas" and comparing it to The Playboy of the Western World and Juno and the Paycock. Ó Dálaigh, a polyglot and enthusiast for European culture, caused consternation to journalists covering his foreign visits due to his tendency to avoid using English.
Ó Dálaigh's presidency coincided with the death of Éamon de Valera in August 1975. He received telegrams of condolence from Pope Paul VI and Kurt Waldheim among others, and he and his wife attended de Valera's funeral at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral.