fiftieth anniversary. Keogh described Hearne’s contribution thus: ‘Apart from de Valera himself, no individual was so centrally involved in the drafting and shaping of the new Constitution.’18 In the same year, University College Dublin academic Brian Kennedy, in an article in the Irish Times, under the heading ‘The special position of John Hearne’, described him as ‘a distinguished civil servant – the man behind the 1937 Constitution’.19 On the seventy-fifth anniversary (2012), Hearne was described in a publication as ‘the person who played the most consistent and central part in the drafting process’.20 A year later, Seán Faughnan wrote that Hearne ‘with de Valera, was to prove to be the principal architect of the 1937 Constitution’.21 More recently, scholars have confirmed this assessment. Diarmaid Ferriter has commented: ‘Nor was its creation possible without the contribution of civil servants like John Hearne and Maurice Moynihan’ (secretary to the government, 1937–48).22 Bill Kissane identified Hearne as the most important of the civil servants involved in its production23 and, in the opinion of Judge Gerard Hogan, ‘the supremely gifted John Hearne was the principal drafter’.24
While the role of John Hearne in the making of the 1937 Constitution has emerged from obscurity, it is important, however, never to forget that the document’s prime mover and originator was Éamon de Valera. The Irish version of his biography conveyed this point with powerful directness: ‘Bhí rian láimhe de Valera go trom ar an mBunreacht agus é á dhréchtadh. Chaith sé dua agus dícheall le gach alt agus gach focal ann.’ (De Valera’s handwork was very much on the Constitution as it was being drafted. He put labour and effort into every paragraph and word.)25 Professor Ronan Fanning wrote in 1987:
It is historically accurate to speak of the 1937 Constitution as de Valera’s Constitution, not merely because he was the head of the government that enacted it but because the records recently released by the Department of the Taoiseach and by the Franciscan Institute in Killiney, where de Valera’s own papers are housed, put his personal predominance beyond any shadow of doubt.26
Faughnan commented that ‘ultimately it was de Valera’s decision what should or should not be included. The drafting of the Irish Constitution of 1937 was a process which was controlled and, in all essentials, inspired by de Valera himself’.27 Hearne’s son, Maurice, acknowledged this fact in notes he prepared for a biography of his father: ‘The Constitution of 1937 sprang from the nationalist ideals of Eamon de Valera, it was his political brainchild and it was he and he alone, among the Irish political figures at the time, who had the courage to shepherd it to its successful conclusion between 1935–7.’ Of his father’s role, he added: ‘It is equally clear to me that it was my father whom Mr de Valera most trusted to bring his ideal to that successful conclusion.’28
Notwithstanding a greater knowledge and appreciation of John Hearne’s part in the process which led to Bunreacht na hÉireann, Professor J.J. Lee was correct when he observed that ‘much remains to be uncovered about the planning and drafting of the Constitution, including not least the role of John Hearne and Maurice Moynihan’.29 This book concentrates on Hearne and attempts to identify more precisely, describe more thoroughly and assess more critically his role. It is a task made difficult, however, by the absence of any personal papers belonging to him and of official sources at important times in the process of writing the document. Hearne confirmed this fact in a letter to Maurice Moynihan in 1963:
As regards the English version [of the Constitution], I kept no records at all of my conversations with the President or others in the course of the drafting, and made none afterwards. On one occasion during the drafting, the President asked me whether I was making notes of our conversations and I said I was not doing so. As to whether there is any summary account of the discussions, their general nature, and so on, I should say there is no such account. There is none prepared by me and none of which I am aware.30
Nevertheless, it is important to try and understand Hearne’s role more completely. It is also an opportunity to assess the document from the perspective and through the prism of Hearne’s contribution – a document regarded by de Valera as one of his [de Valera’s] two greatest achievements,31 and of which it has been commented that ‘little else in his career throws such a shadow over contemporary Ireland’.32
CHAPTER 1
Family, Education and Politics, 1893–1921
John Joseph Hearne was born on 4 December 1893 at 8 William Street in the city of Waterford. He was the fifth son and the seventh of eight children, five boys and three girls, born to Richard Hearne (1850–1929) and Alice Mary Hearne, née Power (1856–1934).1 The William Street home in which he lived was not much more than 250 metres from the Viking Triangle, a small area of approximately two hectares, where the Vikings first settled in 914 and which came to define the historic centre of the city, the oldest in Ireland. As he grew up, Hearne came to appreciate the rich heritage of his birthplace and the significant role his family played in it. He always retained affection for the city of his birth and regarded it as ‘home’, often visiting it at Christmas while his parents were alive.2 In December 1945, returning after the War from Canada, where he was Ireland’s High Commissioner, he again came to Waterford for Christmas. On 18 December, he and his son, Maurice, then aged about ten, were both granted the freedom of the city on the basis of hereditary application, his father Richard having been a freeman.3 The fact that he applied for this suggests Hearne’s sense and appreciation of family history and municipal tradition, expressed in claiming a privilege, albeit strictly honorary, defined by familial right and in accordance with the old and established practice of the city’s Corporation.
Waterford at the turn of the twentieth century
The city of Hearne’s birth recorded a population of 20,852 in the 1891 census.4 This was to increase to 27, 464 by 1911;5 indeed, between 1901 and 1911, Waterford’s population grew faster than that of any other southern Irish city, except Dublin. Prosperity depended on the provisions’ trade. In the 1890s, bacon curing was one of the few significant industries, employing 850 people in four factories and supporting 150 pig buyers.6 The number of jobs available in Waterford, however, failed to keep pace with the rising population. Unemployment continued to rise steadily though, by 1911, the number of males out of work had fallen. As a consequence of joblessness, poverty was pervasive. Appalling housing conditions, with attendant problems of poor drainage and lack of hygiene, meant that the city recorded the highest death rate of any town in Ireland in the 1880s. By the 1890s, the Corporation began tackling the housing problem but conditions were far from satisfactory and, in 1909, a particularly high number of deaths from tuberculosis was recorded.7
The most densely populated area in Waterford was the Centre Ward and it was here that some of its poorest inhabitants lived.8 Although William Street was not far from this part of the city, the life experience of John Hearne was very different to that of many of the people in that ward. Society was structured according to a graduated class system9 and the Hearne family was middle class. Their house was located in Tower Ward, where 70 per cent of residents were house owners; by contrast, the comparable figure for the Centre Ward was only 3 per cent.10 The Hearnes had a live-in domestic servant.11 In what has been described as ‘the endemically stratified social life of the city’,12 John Hearne very likely had no significant contact with those less socially advantaged than he. This is apparent from an account of a conversation his son Maurice remembered having with him, in which his father recounted an event while serving in the Free State army during the Civil War:
One experience when he was a junior officer remained with him and he related it to me as a small boy in Canada, probably, I think, to let me know how well off we were in comparison with so many others. He was passing by the NCOs’ mess one dinner time and he heard a soldier, when asked what was on offer for dinner, reply almost in disbelief: ‘Mate, again, begob’. It only dawned on him that the average Irish family could afford meat but once a week at the very outside.13
