In the two-and-a-half centuries since his death in March 1753, much has been written about the life and times of Bishop George Berkeley - but little about his influence on 20th-century Ireland. Three years ago, artist Ramie Leahy, the present owner of Dysart Castle, Berkeley's childhood home in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, wrote to the Taoiseach seeking financial aid to prevent its "imminent collapse".
So far, Mr Ahern has declined to help. While it might initially seem somewhat absurd to claim that the preservation of this historic building should be a priority of the current Government, the matter becomes less so when one considers that Berkeley's thinking arguably informed the rhetoric of Fianna Fáil economic policy until the late 1950s.
Patrick Hogan, Cumann na nGaedheal's Minister for Agriculture, famously described this policy in 1929 as reading "like an essay on Irish economics by a bright Junior Grade boy who was 'good' at addition and subtraction and very good at English, and which he accomplished partly on his own and partly by judicious cogging". The historian William Murphy seeks to show, in a paper published in the current issue of Irish Economic and Social History, how Berkeley's The Querist was one of the unacknowledged sources from which Fianna Fáil "cogged" after it took office in 1932 until de Valera finally declared his debt to the bishop on the occasion of the bicentenary of his death in 1953.
Berkeley was Church of Ireland Bishop of Cloyne when he produced The Querist, published in three volumes between 1735 and 1737. Although he is better known for his philosophical writing, he was encouraged to examine the social and economic problems of Ireland by Thomas Prior and Samuel Madden, both instrumental in the founding of the Dublin Society in 1731. The Querist presents Berkeley's conclusions in the form of over 500 rhetorical questions. What was it about the book that attracted the attention of de Valera and other party members? Question 127 suggests that Irish domestic trade is sufficient to "nourish and clothe its inhabitants, and provide them with the reasonable conveniences and even comforts of life". Question 134 proposes that Irish people could live "cleanly and comfortably" even if "a wall of brass a thousand cubits high" were erected around this island.
Taken together, these statements tally nicely with the doctrine of self-sufficiency that dominated government thinking under de Valera - who asserted, as early as August 1927, that "our guiding principle will be to make Ireland as self-contained and as self-supporting as possible". Several years later, in a subtle nod to Berkeley, he spoke of the party being "in harmony with all Irish national thought on economics in the past".
Hugo Flinn, Fianna Fáil TD for Cork Borough, said in the Dáil in 1928 that the Irish were "in relation to many things in our private lives choosing a standard of comfort which is interfering with our capacity to maintain a large population in this country on a widely distributed standard of frugal comfort". Berkeley could again be turned to for support of the notion of frugal comfort being integral to the overall economic health of the state.
His stern disapproval of Irish ladies using Flanders lace rather than native material in their garments neatly supports de Valera's statement to the 1933 Fianna Fáil Ardfheis that "it is the duty of a woman to go out and boast that from head to foot she is clothed in Irish manufacture, and she ought to be ashamed of the fact that she has got foreign clothes". Berkeley's strong views on the merits of tillage over grazing also found echoes in Fianna Fáil thinking on this issue. Frank Aiken stated in the Dáil in 1931 that "a man must work to live and there is no doubt that the production of tillage gives more employment and distributes much more wages than the production of cattle".
Murphy recognises that several "interested economists, nationalists and writers inhabit the space between Berkeley and de Valera and contributed to the transfer of the bishop's ideas". Isaac Butt, founder of the Home Rule Party which Sinn Féin under de Valera had helped to collapse, was the person who engaged most seriously with Berkeley's economic ideas during the 19th century. Indeed, it has been suggested that Butt may have been a significant influence on Fianna Fáil's tariff policy.
TW Rolleston, writing in 1909, contended that when anyone seeks to render Ireland a self-reliant, thriving and industrious nation, "it is the spirit of Berkeley that may be called upon to bless the work, it is in the maxims of Berkeley that a treasure of practical wisdom may be sought to guide the reformer in the path of true national progress".
During the bishop's bicentenary year, de Valera told a large gathering in Cloyne that the party's achievements and policies were a response to The Querist. More specifically, he maintained that "we asked these questions in Fianna Fáil as we had done in Sinn Féin, and when Fianna Fáil came into office in 1932 we set about giving the answer in concrete form".
Murphy's conclusion, then, that Fianna Fáil was "quite prepared to utilise the writings of an 18th-century Protestant clergyman in the rhetoric with which they outlined their political programme for an economically independent Ireland" may offer some grounds for hope to those concerned with the upkeep of Dysart Castle for existing and future generations.