“By the 1950s the Irish political elite had run out of economic road. Most of them were veterans from the War of Independence. They were old and tired; their economic ideas fossils from a world that had disappeared” Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty I last saw him in the summer of 2007 having lunch in the Broadhaven Bay Hotel in Belmullet. Dressed in a tweed suit, he looked like a retired doctor, lawyer or civil servant – the kind of man for whom the abandonment of a tie, even on holiday, is a sartorial indiscretion.
Near him was a gaggle of Leaving Cert students, discussing animatedly their results, which had been released that day. They did not know him, nor in their excitement would they have been much interested to learn that he had been a profound influence on the Ireland in which they had grown up.
The strains of Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ wafted through the hotel. He probably did not recognise the song. It may even have been doing his head in. Yet, unwittingly, the song expressed a truth about him. For the man quietly eating his lunch was the best civil servant in the history of the Irish State – Thomas Kenneth Whitaker.
Born in 1916, a native of Rostrevor in County Down, Ken Whitaker rose rapidly through the ranks of the Irish Civil Service to become Secretary of the Department of Finance at the age of 39. The stolid system of seniority for appointments crumbled before his unique talents.
He attained that eminence at a critical time in our history. The 1950s, in social and economic terms, was the most depressing decade in Ireland in the last century. Nothing expresses this depression as forcibly as the emigration statistics.
Between 1951 and 1961 over 400,000 people left the Republic to seek work abroad. During that decade we lost 75 per cent of our birthrate to emigration. The 1956 Census recorded our lowest population since reliable statistics became available.
Most of those who left were very young, poorly educated and ill-prepared. In his book, ‘Dialann Deoraí’ (The Diary of an Irish Navvy), Donall Mac Amhlaigh poignantly captures the reality of that period. He tells the story of a young man asked by a customs official at Holyhead to open his suitcase:
“And what a to-do there was about our bags. You’d think that we were carrying priceless jewels instead of the few old rags we had. The man in front of him shoved an old, battered case that was tied with a bit of rope to keep it shut. The following conversation ensued:
‘What have you got here?’ said the customs officer.
‘Yerra, nothing at all,’ said my lad with a grin.
‘Open it up, all the same,’ said your man.
‘Sure it’s hardly worth my while,’ said the lad.
‘Look here, you’re only wasting both our time. I can’t let you through until you open up that bag.’
‘Fair enough,’ said my lad and drew out of his pocket a bloody big knife with which he cut the rope around the case. The lid jumped up just like a Jack-in-the-Box and out leapt an old pair of Wellington boots that had been twisted up inside it. Devil the thing else was in the case – not even a change of socks.”
Emigration was the most resonant drumbeat of Irish life in the 1950s. It called into question the viability of Ireland as an economic entity. As Whitaker wrote: “After 35 years of native government people are asking whether we can achieve an acceptable degree of economic progress.”
By the 1950s the Irish political elite had run out of economic road. Most of them were veterans from the War of Independence. They were old and tired; their economic ideas fossils from a world that had disappeared.
By 1959 Eamon de Valera had been head of the Irish Government for 23 years. So far as economics were concerned, he lived in a kind of Celtic cloud cuckoo-land. He clung to the narrow vision of frugal self-sufficiency with passionate intensity.
This vision found expression in the policy of protection of Irish industry by imposing tariffs on imports. Foreign ownership of industries in Ireland was prevented by legislation. Free trade was frowned upon.
Whatever merits the policy had in the economic environment of the 1930s, it was inadequate after the Second World War. Throughout the developed economies of the world the emphasis now was on free trade.
Fifty years ago Whitaker co-ordinated the publication of a major document, ‘Economic Development’, which proposed a reversal of the policies which had dominated in Ireland since the 1930s. The central emphasis was on the encouragement of multi-national corporations to invest in the country.
Seán Lemass became Taoiseach in 1959. He had the courage to admit the mistakes of the past and the pragmatism to support Whitaker.
The policy bore immediate fruit. In the first five years of the new economic programme GNP grew by four per cent each year. Unemployment dropped by a third, emigration fell to less than half of its 1954-61 level. The Census of 1966 recorded an increase in our population. We were on our way to becoming one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
