The Constitutional Review Group noted in 1996 "that there is no public demand or good reason for abolition of the office" of President. The review group considered that: "A State requires a Head of State; the President's function as guardian of the Constitution requires that the office be separated from the executive." Those observations are to be seen in the context of the views of the 1967 Committee on the Constitution, which was divided between those who argued for abolition and those who favoured retention. There are few abolitionists left in the 1990s.
Although there is no published history of the Presidency, the experience in public life of the 30 years which separated both reports has demonstrated the efficacy and importance of that office for the protection of democratic institutions and for the defence of the rights of Irish citizens.
Each of the seven incumbents since 1938 has, as the office requires, been a "guardian of the constitution", Cearbhall O Dalaigh going so far as to resign in order to protect the integrity of the office.
Collectively, all seven presidents have helped to change a negative public perception of the office which was there when the draft constitution was first discussed in the Dail in 1937. Cynical views have often been expressed about the Presidency having been a "retirement home" for long-serving politicians. That was never the case, and Mary Robinson's seven years provided the answer to those who favoured abolition or spoke disparagingly about the importance of the office.
The Presidency is now an integral part of the constitutional life of the State which has served the country very well over the years.
Yet it was in no sense inevitable that the Irish State should have had the office of President. It required imagination and constitutional farsightedness on the part of Eamon de Valera and his main legal adviser, John Hearne, to graft that office onto a system of Cabinet government when drafting the 1937 Constitution.
Acutely aware of the importance of symbols in Irish life, the Presidency was established at one level to emphasise the definitive removal of the king and his representative, the governor-general. The office of the president provided the tangible evidence. De Valera's primary concern, however, was to establish an institution rooted in popular suffrage which gave the people a guardian of the Constitution. De Valera proposed the establishment of the office in the context of the drafting of the Constitution. It was perhaps the most revolutionary act in his constitutional revolution and he had it pass through the Dail in the teeth of opposition from across the floor. ail. In the climate of the 1930s, it was not surprising that the opposition benches would find parallels in the proposal with authoritarian and fascist regimes in Europe. A deep-seated mistrust of de Valera's commitment to democratic institutions was very evident during the debates, as an eminent legal figure like John A. Costello - later Taoiseach - rose to tell the house that "the scheme is one for dictatorial powers, come what may, to whoever is president, whether it is the present president of the Executive Council or somebody else . . . I tell the House there is not a greater tyranny than the tyranny which masquerades under the cloak of democracy."
Working on the unspoken assumption that de Valera would be the first president, Patrick McGilligan, the leading expert on constitutional law in the country, commented: "In analysing this Constitution, I prefer always to take this test: what could a man, ambitious of power, do who had succeeded to this office and who, at the end of its term of years, had a subservient government about to face the people with a certainty of being defeated?" Costello's opposition to the office of President was total:
"We do not want anybody to be in any way superior to the government of the people. We do not want any president, any king, any governor-general, or anybody else to be superior to the government elected by the people's representatives in parliament. That is our policy." T.F. O'Higgins argued: "I would rather have nobody to guard the guardians but the plain people down below, than have any individual presuming to be a sort of super Irish guardian angel. Who will guard the guardians?" he asked.
Mr O'Higgins advised that the president should be given no powers by law and no powers by the Constitution. "Create him a really high ceremonial head, but as far as powers go, make him as powerless as the governors-general were in this country or as the king is across the way.
Giving . . . excessive powers, or appearing to give them, will make for trouble in the future." De Valera, dismissing the "theologians on the opposite benches", made light of their arguments.
". . . and this wonderful man, this superman who is to come upon the Earth and be a president, is going to be of such a character that everybody about him is going immediately to kneel at his feet and offer him all these powers . . . This is the dictator we are to look for. The people are going to elect him, and then the representatives of the people are going immediately to abdicate and give to him all their powers." Repeatedly, he returned to the idea that the president would be directly elected by the people and that "they would expect him to carry out his trust properly, and that if he abuses it they will let him know their opinion very quickly". Although the conception of the Presidency did not change significantly throughout the drafting process, the debate had served a very useful purpose. The opposition had very properly held up the new office to radical scrutiny and had helped clarify the nature and the functions of the Presidency, even if they were not converted to the idea of the usefulness of the office. Therefore, de Valera had to think very carefully about his candidate for the position and take opposition sensitivities into account.
The choice of Douglas Hyde lifted the office out of the realms of politics. Intellectual, author and a leading figure in the Gaelic cultural revival, he was a member of the Church of Ireland who had attended Trinity College Dublin. He had been professor of modern Irish in the NUI from 1908 to his retirement in 1932. He had been made a senator in 1925. There was no election. Hyde became the first president of Ireland in 1938.
Although he suffered a stroke in 1941, he completed his term of office, and retired in 1945 to his native Roscommon where he died in 1949.
In 1938 de Valera demonstrated the importance of the office of president by transferring one of the most senior members of his own department, Michael McDunphy, to serve as secretary to the new president and run his office at Aras an Uachtarain.
In order to reinforce the importance of the office, the Taoiseach made a practice of visiting the Aras at least once a month. Relations between the Aras and the Department of the Taoiseach during the first presidency were cordial, even if there were procedural difficulties to be addressed. Sean T. O'Kelly, who may have been de Valera's original candidate for president in 1938, was elected to that office in 1945. Unopposed for a second term in 1952, O'Kelly served until 1959. Small, dapper and ever good-humoured, he was made even more diminutive by the tall hat which it was the custom to wear.
Immensely popular, he was the object of sharp Dublin wit. On the day of his inauguration, he rode in an open carriage through the capital, where one woman shouted to his wife, Phyllis: "Hey, missus, put him up on your knee so that we can see him." When he was being introduced to the Irish rugby team at Lansdowne Road, it was alleged that the Northerners would say to each other: "Will you cut the grass so that we can see him." O'Kelly was a much-loved figure at home and abroad.
On his most celebrated trip abroad, he addressed the US House of Congress on St Patrick's Day, 1959. During his two terms, O'Kelly reinforced the independence of the Presidency; particularly during the term of the inter-party government between 1948 and 1951, when his office was in extensive correspondence with the Department of the Taoiseach over whether or not the new papal nuncio should present his credentials to the president before being received at a religious ceremony in the Pro-Cathedral.
But the Presidency was sufficiently long-established to allow such matters to be dealt with in a routine manner. There were other occasions, following the return of Fianna Fail to power after 1951, when the Department of the Taoiseach discouraged a sometimes accident-prone president from travelling abroad.
Both Hyde and O'Kelly, each in his own way, strengthened the office of the Presidency. Their successor, Eamon de Valera, was 77 when he became president in 1959.
He retired from the office in 1973. His role as guardian of the Constitution in the troubled years of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the exception of a few fragments in the public domain, remains to be fully revealed. But it will make very interesting reading when that is done.
Two presidents followed de Valera in quick succession.
Erskine Childers, a person of great energy and creativity, defeated T.F. O'Higgins for the Presidency. He singled out the drug problem especially as an area on which his term of office would focus; he had a number of creative ideas for the development of the office which were not shared by the government. Although his Presidency was only a year and five months, he made a significant impact before his death on November 17th, 1974.
His contribution might have been greater but for the conservatism of the government of the day.
Cearbhall O Dalaigh's two years as president may come to be regarded by historians of 20th-century Ireland as one of the most important terms in the history of the office. His role as guardian of the Constitution during that short period merits the most detailed scrutiny.
The manner of his leaving reflected well on that man of integrity. The context in which he felt forced to resign, the files may yet show, was a microcosm of a far wider problem. His action protected the good name of the office.
Dr Patrick Hillery, like his predecessor, did not contest an election for the Presidency. It is again clear from the historical fragments which have come into the public domain that it is very necessary to have such a guardian of the Constitution when political arrogance is abroad. Historians ought to be slow to judge "the success" of the different presidencies. The trials and tribulations of a single night may demonstrate the quality of an entire presidency.
Much has been deservedly written about the term of Mrs Mary Robinson. President during a communications revolution, she visited every part of the country and received thousands of people in the Aras. The candle in the window, a universal symbol of welcome, was much more than a gesture. It was backed up by the actions of a president who made people at home and abroad feel welcome and included. She displayed the highest qualities of leadership.
Mrs Robinson repeatedly demonstrated the importance which the office has come to assume for the citizens of this country.
The institution of the Presidency is one of de Valera's most enduring contributions to the development of Irish democracy, and every holder of that office has served this country with distinction.
Dr Dermot Keogh is Professor of History at University College Cork. His forthcoming book is Jews in 20th Century Ireland Immigrants, Refugees, Citizens
