TOM O'HIGGINS: A family background of dedication to Irish nationalism and to public service, and an intellectual brilliance hidden behind a jovial exterior.
The death on February 25th at the age of 86 of former Chief Justice Tom O'Higgins has brought an end to what he himself in his memoirs called A Double Life, shared between the rough and tumble of politics and the urbane legal worlds of the Four Courts and the European Court of Justice.
He was able to move with apparent ease between these two existences as the fortunes of his political life fluctuated. This may have owed something to his remarkable family background of dedication to the cause of Irish nationalism and to public service and to his own intellectual brilliance, hidden behind a jovial exterior and a common touch.
With two violent deaths among his forebears - the assassination of his uncle, Kevin O'Higgins, by the IRA in 1927 and the murder of his grandfather by Irregulars during the Civil War - O'Higgins was convinced of the need to find non-violent solutions to Ireland's political problems. In what we now call "Hume-speak", O'Higgins, back in 1957, as the then IRA Border campaign was ending, was urging "a unity of hearts and of wills between Irishmen on both sides of the present Border" and rejecting a "territorial unity achieved through the carnage and destruction of a civil war."
He was aware, of course, that his father and several uncles had been active in Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers during the Anglo-Irish War but he probably found more inspiration in the "constitutional nationalism" tradition of his parliamentarian great-grandfather, T.D. Sullivan, author of patriotic ballads such as God Save Ireland and Deep in Canadian Woods and whose bust always stood on his desk.
O'Higgins's family background also included the fact that his doctor father was a founder member of the Army Comrades' Association in the 1930s, known as the Blueshirts. It provided protection for Cumann na nGaedheal candidates during the unruly election campaigns of the period while also having an ideological wing inspired by the corporatist philosophy of Papal encyclicals and of Benito Mussolini.
In later years, O'Higgins defended his father's role, saying that it was "a time when people forget that the right of free speech was everywhere in danger in Ireland". He recalled that when his father fought a by-election he was "several times nearly killed" while the Civic Guards were "confined to barracks".
O'Higgins was an early proponent of Ireland taking its rightful place in the evolving European post-war institutions and was an Irish representative in the Council of Europe where he met Winston Churchill as well as being an active member of the Irish Council of the European Movement.
Thomas Francis O'Higgins was born in Sunday's Well, Cork, on July 23rd, 1916, to Dr Thomas F. O'Higgins and Agnes McCarthy. Dr O'Higgins, who was then director of the army medical service, lived in Portobello Barracks with his growing family. O'Higgins was educated by the Holy Ghost fathers at nearby St Mary's College, Rathmines. He finished his schooling at Clongowes, as was customary in the family.
He expected to follow in his father's and grandfather's medical footsteps and was surprised when his father steered him towards the law. "It wasn't really a choice of mine," he told an interviewer in 1973. "I'm afraid I just accepted what I had to do and did it."
He sailed through his examinations, gaining first class honours at University College Dublin, in legal and political science and winning first place in Ireland in his final bar examination at the King's Inns. He was called to the Bar in 1938.
He combined his early legal practice with defence of Irish neutrality during the "Emergency" period of the second World War when he commanded an anti-aircraft company in Ringsend, Dublin, as a member of the Local Defence Force. In 1943, he stood unsuccessfully for Fine Gael in Dublin City South but he won a seat in Laois-Offaly in the 1948 general election. The O'Higgins family roots were in Stradbally, Co Laois.
On the same day, his father was re-elected in Cork City and his brother, Michael, was elected in Dublin South-West, which must be a unique family achievement. His father was appointed minister for defence and later for industry and commerce in the first inter-party government.
Shortly after O'Higgins was elected, he married Terry Keane, who had been born in Listowel, Co Kerry, but had lived most of her life in England. They had met the previous August while on holiday in Ballybunion and become engaged after 10 days of courtship. They were to have five sons and two daughters
In 1954, the year he was called to the Inner Bar, O'Higgins was re-elected in the election which resulted in the formation of the second inter-party government and was surprised to be appointed minister for health by the new Taoiseach, legal colleague John A. Costello. It says something about the wayward nature of Cabinet formation in those days that Dr O'Higgins had been minister for defence while his barrister son was taking over health.
For the new minister, the Civil War background to the politics of the 1950s was "very dissatisfying". Looking back in 1973 as he contested his second Presidential election, he told an interviewer that "I was always concerned to find a philosophy which would be satisfying and which could be shared by those in my own party."
In the health portfolio he found scope to develop his ideas of fairness and social justice which would find fuller expression a decade later in the "Just Society" proposals of Declan Costello.
As a new minister, his priority was to implement the 1953 Health Act which Fianna Fáil had introduced following the political debacle of the Mother and Child Scheme, which brought down the first inter-party government. The Act needed considerable work by O'Higgins and his officials to improve the then limited health service. But it was primarily aimed at the poorer sections of the community and there was a need to cater for the health needs of those earning more than £600 a year.
O'Higgins's answer was to commission a report on voluntary health insurance for this sector and to set up the VHI in 1957 shortly before the Government fell after fewer than three years in office.
Back in opposition, he combined legal practice with work to modernise Fine Gael under its new leader, James Dillon. O'Higgins helped found a study group called the Research and Information Centre where he, Declan Costello and Alexis Fitzgerald encouraged debate and attracted new members. Out of this gradually emerged Declan Costello's manifesto, "Towards a Just Society".
It emerged too late to play a significant role in the 1965 election in which Fine Gael was disappointed not to increase its seats. When Liam Cosgrave took over as leader, he named O'Higgins as the party spokesman on finance and economic affairs and continued the cautious shift towards a social democratic stance.
In 1966 the party sought a suitable candidate to oppose the incumbent, Eamon de Valera, in the Presidential election in June. O'Higgins suggested John A. Costello but found that the party wanted himself to run as representing change and a younger generation. It was to be a turning point in his life.
To his surprise, he almost defeated the venerated de Valera, who had not campaigned and thus deprived his opponent of any RTÉ coverage. The dynamic O'Higgins campaign criss-crossed the country for five weeks, covering over 20,000 miles. On polling day he came within one per cent, or 10,717 votes, of defeating de Valera. He had hoped to avert a rout but in spite of getting so near success, he wrote later that he was "glad" he did not win. He believed that the election greatly raised party morale and brought in many new Fine Gael members.
For the 1969 general election, he moved to the Dublin South constituency. By 1972 tensions were apparent in the front bench as Liam Cosgrave lashed out at "mongrel foxes" within theparty. O'Higgins as deputy leader kept a good relationship with Mr Cosgrave while staying identified with the "liberal" wing of the party.
Early in 1973, O'Higgins found himself selected as the Fine Gael candidate for the Presidential election due the following June when de Valera retired. The timing was unfortunate as Jack Lynch suddenly called a general election obliging O'Higgins to announce that he would not seek re-election to the Dáil in view of his Presidential aim.
He played a leading role, however, in agreeing an advance programme for government with Labour which helped defeat Fianna Fáil. Now he had to watch his Fine Gael colleagues attaining ministerial office while he honoured his commitment to strive for the Presidency.
He was to endure a second defeat, this time at the hands of Finna Fáil's Erskine Childers, whom he had expected to beat. He took his defeat gracefully but wondered if some unpopular measures by his party colleagues in Government had not contributed to it.
He did not have long to pick up the pieces of a legal career to which he could now devote himself full-time as well as to his family. In November 1973, Liam Cosgrave, now Taoiseach, asked him to go to the High Court. "The prospect of a calm and secure future" was now attractive after "the turbulence of previous years," as he put it in his memoirs.
But within a year a more glittering prize was on offer following the sudden death of the Chief Justice, William Fitzgerald, in October 1974. O'Higgins was travelling from Sligo to Longford on High Court circuit when he was summoned to take an urgent message from Liam Cosgrave that the Cabinet had nominated him as the replacement and would he accept. "Dazed and surprised," he accepted.
"It was always a happy and constructive court," was how he described his 10 years heading the Supreme Court. "My task as President was never onerous." He summed up its work as "making the Constitution a significant feature of our democracy, in the sense that people learned that in it, as a basic law, were citizen's rights which the court would protect." He made headlines when, with two other judges, he rejected the appeal of INLA member Dominic McGlinchey against extradition to Northern Ireland to face a murder charge. It was the first time the court rejected the "political offence" plea as a defence against extradition. O'Higgins was told he was now the target of terrorist death threats and was given police protection, although he tended to dismiss the danger.
In 1984, when Ireland's representative on the European Court of Justice, Andreas O'Keeffe, resigned, the Government asked O'Higgins to replace him. Even at 68 the pull of "Europe", for the union of which he had worked over the years, was strong and he and his wife headed for Luxembourg.
He adapted quickly to court practices which he found "puzzling" at first. He participated in a number of significant judgments establishing the court's supremacy over national laws, protecting citizen's rights and opening up competition in air traffic. He was pained at criticism in the Dáil over a Bill to improve the judicial pension situation of himself and other judges who served in Europe. He had been given such a commitment when accepting the post. "I am not a wealthy man."
His term expired in October 1991 and he and his wife returned to Ireland where they shared their time between their homes in Monkstown, Co Dublin, and Pontoon, Co Mayo, where he could indulge his passion for fishing and write his memoirs.
O'Higgins is survived by his wife, Terry; his children Tom, Geraldine, Michael, Barry, Kevin, Derval and Shane; his brother, Michael, and sister Rosaleen Shanley.
Tom O'Higgins: born July 23rd, 1916; died February 25th.