Former taoiseach John A Costello was remembered as a State builder, as a pre-eminent lawyer and as a "simple man who believed in the old-fashioned values of straight talking and plain dealing" at a commemoration on Sunday.
Several dozen people, including members of Mr Costello’s family, attended the event at his graveside at Deansgrange Cemetery in south Dublin, two days short of the 126th anniversary of his birth.
Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise and Innovation Frances Fitzgerald delivered the address, recalling the life of the man who became taoiseach of the first coalition government in the State from 1948 to 1951.
She noted journalist David McCullagh’s “magnificent biography” of Costello described very vividly how that government was put together and how Costello became ‘the Reluctant Taoiseach.’
“It was not a pretence. He was genuinely reluctant but in the end saw it as his patriotic duty,” she said.
‘Vocation’
Mr Costello was a man who believed, “as his good friend James Dillon did, that politics was a vocation – a vocation to public service”, the Tánaiste noted.
“John A Costello was quite literally a State builder. After a brilliant law career at UCD he worked with Hugh Kennedy drafting many of the foundation laws of the State. He became a trusted adviser to WT Cosgrave through the momentous events of these years, working to make a reality of independent statehood and exploiting the full potential of the Treaty in conjunction with developing Commonwealth countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand,” she said.
“When we look back through the perspective of almost a century we can see - and marvel at- the extent of the achievements of that first government.”
These had included fighting and winning a civil war, rebuilding a war-ravaged infrastructure, setting up the new departments of State, and giving Ireland international recognition and voice through joining the new League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation.
Appropriate
Ms Fitzgerald concluded with words from the last speech made by Mr Costello when he stepped down as TD for Dublin South East in 1969, saying they were particularly appropriate at the end of a week when the seventh Fine Gael head of government took office.
He had loved the party but “he was conscious too of its weaknesses and blind spots”, Ms Fitzgerald said.
“And so at his last constituency meeting he told the party workers of Dublin South East: ‘The party which fails to heed the people’s voice will do so at its peril’.”
The event was supported by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and the Bar of Ireland.
At an event in Ballybrack later on Sunday, Fianna Fáil commemorated another former taoiseach, Seán Lemass, who is buried just a short distance from Mr Costello at Deansgrange.
