Citizen Coughlan, relentless, indefatigable, irrepressible. Torrents of arguments, some good arguments, mixed up with bad arguments, and off-the-wall arguments.
Throughout his conversation there is an insinuation that everyone opposed to him is unprincipled, amoral, duplicitous, self-serving. When asked if he thinks the "establishment" is unprincipled, amoral, duplicitous, self-serving, he replies: "they are your words not mine" and then goes on to explain how it is unprincipled, amoral, duplicitous, self-serving.
Words spilling out, failing to keep pace with his brain, his face often contorted in contempt for his imagined adversaries.
The interview took place last Saturday afternoon in a portacabin on the grounds between the back of Trinity College and the Provost's House, just inside the wall from Grafton Street. He has an office there along with others who have taken early retirement from Trinity and he gets to keep it until he reaches his official retirement age (70).
Every day, on behalf of his organisation, the National Platform, he emails hundreds of people with his commentaries on the depredations of the Europhiles. He writes to the newspapers, politicians, journalists and bureaucrats, often enclosing clippings from newspapers and journals, favourable to his Euroscepticism. (Euroscepticism is too mild a characterisation for what is actually Europhobia.)
He has now established a web site (www.nationalplatform.org). He points with relish to a quote on the web site by Otto von Bismarck: "I have always found the word Europe on the lips of those who wanted something from others, which they dared not demand in their own names."
(The National Platform is a tiny organisation of just a few members. The president is Billy Wall, a farmer from Dromcollogher, Co Limerick. Others involved are the former printer, Micheal O Loingsigh, and a north Dublin farmer, Frank Keoghan.)
He raises some serious questions about the nature of the European entity that is being created. He insists its development is being undertaken "by stealth", independent of the involvement of the people of Europe, driven by an elite. He says the project is inherently undemocratic for it is not "legitimated" by the people of Europe, there is no demos (a sense of political unity among the people of Europe) and its institutions can never acquire the acceptance enjoyed by nation states.
His greatest influence, perhaps, has been achieved through the courts. He has been prominent in several seminal constitutional cases.
First the Crotty case, which established that any change to the constitution of the European Union would have to be approved in a referendum of the Irish people. Later he was involved in the McKenna case, which resulted in a judgment by the Supreme Court insisting that public monies spent on referendum campaigns had to be spent equally on the "pro" side and the "con" side.
He supported Senator Des Hanafin in his, ultimately failed, case to have the wafer-thin Yes vote in the divorce referendum declared invalid because of the unconstitutional expenditure by the State on one side of that campaign.
And there was his own case concerning RTE broadcasts during referendums - it established that equal time had to be given to the two sides.
Anthony Coughlan was born in Cork in 1936. He was educated at the Christian Brothers' primary school on O'Sullivan Quay and then at Christian College. In primary school there was compulsory hurling and in secondary school compulsory rugby. Among his class-mates was the biblical scholar, Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor.
He studied history, economics and English in UCC and while there met Michael O'Leary, later leader of the Labour Party and Tanaiste and now a District Court judge in Dublin.
After UCC, Coughlan went to London where he did a diploma in social studies at Bedford College. Coughlan returned to Ireland and a job as lecturer in social studies at Trinity in 1962. He remained as lecturer in social studies until last year, when he took early retirement - he is keen to point out he is still an "emeritus lecturer".
