MARCH 4th, 1970:Party politics was very tetchy in the South in the early months of 1970, not so much because of the growing Troubles in the North but more because of an acrimonious byelection in Dublin South West caused by the death of Labour TD Seán Dunne. Fianna Fáil's Seán Sherwin won the seat by 200+ votes after a campaign that included much hurling of abuse as well as occasional eggs, tomatoes and worse. John Healy described the mood in the Dáil during the final days leading up to polling.
Mr Kevin Boland, the Minister for Local Government, in a rare personal statement, yesterday withdrew the allegation that Deputy Billy Fox, of Monahan, was a B Special: a charge which he made last week and which does not appear on the official records.
Mr Charles Haughey, the Minister for Finance promised Deputy Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien that it would be his policy to be as unsatisfactory in his answering as possible where the deputy was concerned.
Mr Mick Moran, the Minister for Justice, did his Mick-Moran bit like a man who never heard the word "tribunal" when he came to reply to a question raised in an editorial in The Irish Timesabout the number of complaints received by the Garda Commissioner alleging excessive use of force by some gardaí.
Naturally we give Mick in full in page 8: we always do, and Mick knows it. It remains merely for me to point out that Mick liked his task and gave it his bit of relish: though he can’t produce statistics and can’t be bothered to get them, he and the general public know the score: the trouble is caused by layabouts and hooligans. (Later Mick was to talk about “criminal and irresponsible elements” in the hope it would stick on the Labour Party, which was pressing him on the thing.)
Dr Cruise O’Brien, aware that Mick was aware that the matter started over the handling of the Springboks protest, asked if Mick was in order, referring to him as a hooligan. The Chair very correctly pointed out that Mick had not called Conor a hooligan (and seemed to stop short of saying Mick was talking about Conor’s friends), and Conor thought to approach it from another tack: would he be in order calling Mick a hooligan?
The Chair advised him not to try, and Conor averred that he found that ruling in itself of very great interest. Mick, having put The Irish Timesin its unnamed box, felt he should not let the matter go without having a cut at RTÉ, which he accused of "slandering" a garda in running an interview with Wee Bernadette Devlin, and Mick did not believe a word of Wee Bernie: he stuck to the parliamentary term "untruth." He wasn't really in his best form, but it was all right to be going on with on a slack day.
The Minister for Finance took questions for Dr Hillery, the Minister for External Affairs, and he was pressed by Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien: he gave the reply and a terse “no” to the longish supplementary which was an opinion of Conor’s as much as anything else. Conor said in view of the unsatisfactory answer he would raise the matter on the adjournment. Charles, very quietly and with a half-smile, said he hoped that Conor would make a distinction between his replying for the Minister and the Minister himself: implying, it seemed to me, that it was Charlie who was being unsatisfactory, and not Paddy Hillery. Conor quite took the point, and as soon as he did Charlie looked at his brief and said that he intended to be as unsatisfactory as he could be with the deputy. One by one the gauntlets go down on the floor of the 19th Dáil.
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