wave of porter’
There is only one known occasion on which a local authority election result in County Kerry ever troubled the members of the House of Lords at Westminster. The bacchanalian behaviour during the election campaign in the Castleisland Electoral Division in 1908 made it to the floor of the chamber a few years after the controversy. On 14 March 1912, the 7th Earl of Mayo, Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke, rose to call the attention of the government to the position of certain magistrates in Ireland, including J.K. O’Connor of Castleisland, who, along with magistrates in other parts of the country, had been convicted in court of various charges and who, he argued, should be removed from their roles as a result. The earl described O’Connor’s misdeeds to his fellow peers:
Mr O’Connor is a justice of the peace for the county of Kerry and stood as a candidate for the county council for the division of Castleisland. That election will long be remembered, because Castleisland swam in porter, and treating and drunkenness prevailed. So bad was it that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kerry, in the Lenten Pastoral, referred to it. He said: ‘Another matter which a sense of duty compels me to mention is the manner in which some of our local elections are conducted. The language used, instead of being informing and elevating, is grossly personal, lowering, and demoralising.’ And he concluded: ‘Worse still, some of these elections are conducted without even an appearance of public decency. They become the occasion of wholesale drunkenness, and sometimes even of violence.’ Mr O’Connor, at the Castleisland election, headed the poll. He is a most successful merchant in that town, and a wave of porter – you can describe it as nothing else – landed him safely on the county council bench. He headed the poll with a majority of thirty votes. But, alas! there was an election petition. Mr O’Connor appeared as respondent, and this was the result of the Commissioner’s finding – he found that the respondent had been guilty of corruptly supplying drink to voters for the purpose of corruptly influencing such voters, and that the respondent was also guilty of corrupt practices, and he declared the election void.15
Coverage of the case in The Kerry People, 29 August 1908.
The earl wondered why, in keeping with the law, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland had not been informed that O’Connor, as a magistrate, had not been removed from the post when he was found guilty of ‘corrupt practices at an election’. Another peer, the Earl of Desart, claimed that O’Connor had only been removed from the bench in 1911 and that he had exercised judicial functions between 1908 and 1911. Responding, the Paymaster-General, Lord Ashby St Ledgers, said that for some reason the fact was not brought to the Lord Chancellor’s attention. Subsequently, ‘in view of a decision given by Mr Justice Kenny in another case to the effect that the office of a magistrate was ipso facto vacated from the date of the making of the report, the name of Mr O’Connor was removed from the Commission’.
4
‘Struck him violently in the mouth’
The Kerry TD Who Punched a Colleague in the Dáil Dining Room
Seán Lemass rose to his feet in Dáil Éireann to present TDs with details of the Order of Business. It was 31 January 1952. The then Tánaiste outlined the various pieces of legislation to be debated that day, as well as a proposal that the House would not sit the following week. A number of deputies rose to oppose the Order of Business, among them the Fine Gael leader, General Richard Mulcahy, and the leader of Clann na Poblachta, Seán MacBride. Several others asked about various bills which were before the House. The Independent TD for Dublin South East, Dr Noël Browne – who less than a year earlier had resigned as Minister for Health over the controversial Mother and Child Scheme – was called to speak by the Leas Ceann Comhairle, Cormac Breslin: ‘Dr. Browne: I do not want to spend an unduly long time on the list mentioned by Deputy [Liam] Cosgrave but I should like to draw attention to the reference to an Adoption of Children Bill.’1
Liam Cosgrave TD, who had already spoken, interjected to say that he had not made any reference to the Adoption of Children Bill. Across the chamber from Cosgrave, on the Independent benches, the conservative firebrand TD for Laois–Offaly, Oliver J. Flanagan – then an Independent, but later a Fine Gael deputy – made an obscure comment suggesting that another member of the House would be in a better position than Dr Browne to comment on the adoption legislation: ‘Mr. O. Flanagan: Deputy Flynn would be more qualified to do that.’
Deputy Flanagan was referring to the Independent TD for Kerry South, John (Jack) Flynn, who was not in the chamber at the time. The Dáil transcripts do not record any reaction from other TDs to Flanagan’s off-the-cuff remark and they continued with the Order of Business. Within a few short hours, however, Flynn was to give his response to Flanagan – in a most unparliamentary manner.
As Flanagan dined in the busy Dáil restaurant later that evening, he was approached by Flynn and challenged about his remarks earlier that day in the chamber. The Fine Gael parliamentary leader, John A. Costello, later told the Dáil in vivid detail about what followed:
Mr. J.A. Costello: It is my duty to interrupt the business for the purpose of drawing the attention of the House and particularly your attention, a Cheann Comhairle, to a gross breach of the privileges of this House and of a particular Deputy and possibly of other Deputies of the House which occurred in the precincts to-night. The incident is one which is of very grave and particular importance and is even more serious from the point of view of the order and dignity of Parliament. Tonight, after the discussion which took place on the motion to adjourn this House on the conclusion of its proceedings to-day until next Wednesday week … Deputy O. Flanagan was in the restaurant talking to another Deputy, Deputy Dillon, when … Deputy Flynn, came behind him, caught hold of him, turned him round, used a very offensive and obnoxious expression and struck him violently in the mouth, alleging that he had during the debate spoken about him, Deputy Flynn. He also assaulted an usher, one of the servants of the House, and was guilty of extremely offensive conduct. He also made offensive references to another Deputy, Deputy Collins … As leader of the Opposition it then became my duty to inform you, so that you, a Cheann Comhairle, would take the necessary action and direct the proper steps to be taken.
The Ceann Comhairle, Patrick Hogan, insisted that the matter would be fully investigated, suggesting it would be best dealt with by the Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges. Another deputy, Major Vivion de Valera, asked that the Ceann Comhairle take into the account ‘the provocative personal remarks’ made by Deputy Flanagan about Deputy Flynn, which had been ‘deleted from the record’ of the House. The exchanges continued:
Mr. Seán MacBride (CnaP): Is the Deputy [De Valera] trying to justify an assault on a member of this House?
Mr. Patrick Burke (FF): There is only one answer to a common perjurer [Flanagan] who abuses everybody here day after day.
Major de Valera (FF): Will the Ceann Comhairle take these remarks into account is all I ask? They were remarks which were expunged from the records.
Mr. Burke: He [Flanagan] does nothing but blackguard everybody here.
Fianna Fáil’s Robert Briscoe suggested that John A. Costello’s account was ‘not in accordance with the facts’, saying that he was present in the dining room when the incident occurred and that Costello was not. Jack Flynn, who had re-entered the House, fresh from his encounter in the restaurant, concurred: ‘I wish to say that Deputy Costello’s statement is not a true picture of the incident.’
Within days, Flanagan and Flynn were hauled before the Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges, a committee which still oversees the conduct of deputies in the Dáil. The committee’s report into the matter some weeks later set out the position of both TDs, but still did not cast any light on the precise nature
