The Cumann na nGaedheal government of the 1920s made remarkable progress securing the institutions of the newly independent State, the former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, has said.
At a seminar to mark the 80th anniversary of the party's foundation, Dr FitzGerald said that "almost nothing" remained of British rule by 1932, when the first Fianna Fáil government was elected.
Dr FitzGerald's father, Desmond, was minister for external affairs in the first Free State government and a founder member of Cumann na nGaedheal, the precursor of Fine Gael.
Among Cumann na nGaedheal's achievements, Dr FitzGerald said, the party passed a large body of native Irish legislation and established an efficient central administration.
"A new and untried government in the midst of a civil war and its aftermath was not well placed to borrow but had to pay for almost everything out of current revenue," he said. "In these conditions to have succeed in completing the huge task of physical reconstruction by 1931 was an extraordinary achievement."
Dr FitzGerald added: "By 1932, the members of that government were physically exhausted and drained. Reluctantly, and with many fears for the future, they handed over to Fianna Fáil."
However, Dr FitzGerald said, the party went to great lengths to ensure the Army would accept the people's verdict when Fianna Fáil was elected, and loyally "serve the new government comprised of people they had defeated in arms a mere nine years earlier".
The Fine Gael seminar at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin was attended by some 400 people.
Prof Mary E. Daly, of University College, Dublin, said Cumann na nGaedheal was "atypical" because it was first a government and only subsequently became a party "in the most difficult circumstances possible".
"We take it for granted that Ireland is a stable and functioning democracy, but this is a remarkable achievement.
"Practically all the new states that were founded in the aftermath of the 1914-1918 war either failed to survive intact over the next 25 years - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, etc. - or they became dictatorships, and many of the longer-established states in Europe also came under fascist control."
