THE RELUCTANT TAOISEACH

John A. Costello

DAVID MCCULLAGH  

Gill & Macmillan

PREFACE

Most days that the Dáil is sitting, on my way to the Press Gallery, I walk past the portrait of John A. Costello which is on the jacket of this book. For the last couple of years, I have been silently promising the painting that I was nearly finished this biography. At last, I will be able to look Jack Costello’s likeness in the eye again.

John A. Costello’s interests were (not necessarily in this order) golf, the law, religion, politics, and his family. Whatever about the others, the last mentioned enthusiasm is easy to understand for anyone who has met the extended Costello family. Doubtless there is much in this book with which they will disagree, but I hope they will feel that it is fair.

The idea of writing this book has been at the back of my mind for at least ten years, but it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Declan Costello, who encouraged me to undertake it, facilitated access to his father’s papers in UCD, and smoothed my way with various contacts. Unfortunately, a recent illness means that he hasn’t been able to see it finished, a fact I will always regret.

Declan’s brother, John, kindly put some memories on paper for me. I have also been helped by a number of the Costello grandchildren, who have shared memories of the private side of the public man: Jacqueline Armstrong and her husband Fergus, Kyran FitzGerald, Joan Gleeson, Georgina Sutton and Isabelle Sutton (who supplied a treasure trove of photographs).

Many others gave me information about John A. Costello, in interviews or through correspondence, including Jack Christal, Liam Cosgrave, Ronan Fanning, Tom Finlay, Alexis FitzGerald, Ronan Keane, Harvey Kenny, Mick Kilkenny, the late Patrick Lynch, Muiris Mac Conghail, Risteárd Mulcahy, the late Louie O’Brien, Niall O’Carroll, Michael V. O’Mahony, Pat Russell, Richie Ryan and T.K. Whitaker.

Much of the research for this book was carried out in the UCD Archives—many thanks to Seamus Helferty and his colleagues, particularly Orna Somerville who catalogued the Costello Papers. Stephen MacWhite (acting on behalf of Mrs Kathleen MacWhite) kindly granted access to the papers of his grandfather, Michael MacWhite; as did Mella Crowley to her father, Freddie Boland’s memoir. The UCD-OFM partnership facilitated access to the de Valera and MacEoin papers. Thanks also to the staff of the National Archives of Ireland, the British National Archives, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, and the National Library of Ireland (especially Mary Broderick).

I am also grateful to: Jonathan Armstrong, King’s Inns Library; Patricia Boyd, Registry of Deeds; Damien Burke, Irish Jesuit Archive; Mary Clark, Dublin City Archives; Joe Curry, Dominican College, Eccles Street; Noelle Dowling, Dublin Diocesan Archivist; Peter Durnin, Papal Knights Association of Ireland; Estelle Gittins, Trinity College Manuscripts Department; Greg Harkin, All Hallows archives; Elizabeth Keane, biographer of Seán MacBride, who pointed me in a useful Canadian direction; Fran Leahy, Property Registration Authority; Martin Long, Catholic Communications Office; Seán MacCárthaigh and Pascal Letellier at the Arts Council; and Darragh O’Donoghue, Allen Library.

Across the Atlantic, I thank Richie Allen, Library and Archives Canada; Erica Flanagan of the Truman Library; Herb Pankratz at the Eisenhower Library; and John Vernon and Matthew Olsen, United States National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

Friends and colleagues with specialist knowledge have been bothered for information: Eamon Kennedy clarified some legal aspects, Alan Finan interpreted some medical terms, Joe Mac Raollaigh did some translation, and Senator Cecilia Keaveney explained the latest legal developments concerning Lough Foyle. Michael Webb kindly gave me a copy of the Memoirs of his father-in-law (William Bedell Stanford). My father, Robin McCullagh, supplied some information on the stamp marking the centenary of John A. Costello’s birth, and more importantly he and my mother, June, performed child minding duties above and beyond the call of duty.

At Gill & Macmillan, I’d like to thank Fergal Tobin for taking on the book in the first place (a decision I hope he won’t regret!); D Rennison Kunz who oversaw the editorial process; Nicki Howard who commissioned the jacket and looked after marketing; Teresa Daly who dealt with publicity; and photo researcher Jen Patton. Thanks also to editor Esther Kallen, and to Helen Litton for compiling the index. My gratitude to them all.

Elaine Byrne and Maurice Manning made helpful suggestions on the manuscript, as did John Fanagan, who kindly proof-read the entire draft, despite the fact that we had never met. Any errors that remain are, of course, entirely my fault. I really should have listened to them.

Finally, to my family, who have had to put up with my absences, physical and mental, as this was written. My wife, Anne-Marie Smyth, encouraged me to start the project, to find a publisher, and to keep going. Our daughter, Rosie, also urged me towards the finishing line, with the encouraging words: “Are you not finished that book yet?” My love, and my thanks, to them both.

David McCullagh

May 2010

Introduction  

John A. Costello was unique among Irish heads of government for two reasons. Firstly, he wasn’t the leader of his party—he was chosen as Taoiseach in 1948 as a compromise among the five parties who wished to form a government. The second difference between him and other holders of the office was even more fundamental: his genuine reluctance to take the job. Not only did he not seek the top job in Irish politics, he actively fought against taking it.

Other holders of the office have struggled to attain it; Jack Costello had it thrust upon him. The only other politician to hesitate before accepting a chance to take the job was Jack Lynch of Fianna Fáil in 1966. Lynch has sometimes been described as a reluctant Taoiseach. But his reluctance was entirely due to consideration for his wife³—there was no doubt that he, unlike Costello, actually wanted the job.

Apart from being essentially a part-time politician, other factors seemed to militate against Costello. For the first 44 years of the State’s existence, the other three men who headed Irish governments had played prominent parts in the 1916 Rising. Costello, by contrast, had been playing golf when the Rising broke out, and many years later still seemed aggrieved at having had his journey home interrupted by a roadblock.⁴ He played no role either in the War of Independence, apart from representing prisoners in a couple of court cases.

In fact, like the vast majority of his contemporaries, he had been a Home Ruler rather than a Republican during most of this period, one of the rising Catholic middle class who saw the introduction of Home Rule as their ticket to greater political, economic and social status. One of the ironies of Irish history is the ultimate triumph of such people, who seemed to have been cast to the margins by the War of Independence.

In office, Costello was to provide surprises, too, not least his success in holding together two disparate coalition governments for considerable lengths of time—comparable, indeed, to the tenure of the single-party government which came between them. Despite his earlier key role in the development of the Commonwealth, he declared the Republic, a development not without its controversies, but nonetheless significant. And while he was seen as a temporary or stop-gap Taoiseach, he served longer in the office than any of his Fine Gael successors to date.

It has been widely known that his reluctance to take the job was, at least in part, due to his desire not to leave the law—for both professional and financial reasons. His love of the practice of law was obvious to all who knew him, and he could even say in an interview while Taoiseach that “his biggest moment was not when he became Prime Minister, but when ‘winning a big case’”.⁵

But there was another reason, as he revealed in an extraordinary letter to his son Declan, then in Switzerland, written just days after he became Taoiseach: “I think I can honestly say that it was not the financial loss or even the parting from my life’s work as an advocate … that made me fight so hard against acceptance, but a fear amounting almost to terror that I would be a flop as Taoiseach and bring discredit on the new administration if it was formed. I felt that such a new departure would be looked upon with distrust and be subjected to severe criticism. If I proved unfit it would be disastrous for them all.”⁶

This engaging self-doubt was also, to say the least, untypical in holders of the office of Taoiseach. However, Costello’s reluctance, while real enough, should not be exaggerated. Once he agreed to take on the job, he did so with his characteristic determination, energy and application. Indeed, in the same letter to his son, he concluded by saying that despite his initial doubts, “I can now assure you that I am perfectly and supremely happy and contented, and face the future and what it holds with resignation, and with confidence and hope.”⁷

Anyone watching, or listening to, John A. Costello would have been surprised at his admission of a lack of confidence. As an Irish Times editorial at the time of his death noted, he was a man who “breathed belligerence”.⁸ This public image was reinforced by his tendency to scowl in photographs—apparently he didn’t smile for the camera because he didn’t like having his photograph taken.⁹ In later life, with his hat, his cigar and his scowl, he reminded one of his granddaughters of “a Mafioso boss, particularly as he dived into his big black State car at the end of a working day”.¹⁰

His belligerence was evident on the political platform, in interviews, and most particularly in the courts. One of those on the receiving end of his forensic brilliance was Dr Harry Parker, an acquaintance who was appearing as an opposing witness. “I remember one occasion when you attacked me most savagely in the witness box and for, as far as I could see, no good reason. Feeling hurt, I asked Cecil Lavery what was the reason. This most gifted counsel, like little Audrey, laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He intimated that you simply wanted to win your case …”¹¹

But this belligerence was only part of the story. As the same Irish Times editorial observed, his manner was misleading, his belligerence “the armour he put on against his sensitive and compassionate disposition”.¹² Those who worked with and for him praised his kindness—even Noël Browne, the Minister for Health who never forgave Costello for his handling of the Mother and Child crisis. There are many examples in his personal papers of his charitable instincts,¹³ and he maintained his interest in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul throughout his life.

The law was, arguably, his first love. Political opponents like Seán Lemass accused him of being prepared to argue any brief, in politics as in the law. “He was still at the Bar as it were: he was not really concerned about the soundness of the brief. He argued to the brief given to him by his Party or his officials.”¹⁴ This was unfair, but then Lemass had a famous aversion to lawyers in general, and Fine Gael lawyers in particular. Interestingly, Ronan Keane, a future Chief Justice who saw both Lemass and Costello speak at a debate at UCD’s Literary and Historical Society in 1951, felt that Costello was by far the more effective speaker, because of his ability to appeal to ordinary people. It was this which made him such a “great jury operator”—he knew how to come across as one of them.¹⁵

His secretary, Patrick Lynch, who knew him well, said his background in the law was not always an advantage. “Acceptance of the law’s delays did not foster an overnight conversion to consistent punctuality. The vehement rhetoric of the courts did not necessarily match the changing moods of the Dáil, and he sometimes found it hard to avoid flowery diction and the purple patch.”¹⁶ His forceful speaking style could be both a blessing and a curse in political terms—his speeches were generally quite entertaining, and his aide-de-camp and political assistant Mick Byrne always urged him to throw away his script and speak off the cuff during election meetings in the constituency.¹⁷ But what pleased a crowd could also cause trouble.

As his son-in-law Alexis FitzGerald tactfully pointed out to him, “it is impossible to speak frequently ex tempore without the eloquence of some moment reaching further than the facts warrant … whenever Mick Byrne tells you to do without a script, please remember that if I were present I would howl for one. As many of the words that you have as Taoiseach to utter should be thought out carefully before they are uttered, I am certain that you should suffer the glory of the moment to pass by. The cheers cease but litera scripta manet [the written word remains]. The local enthusiasm will be less, the national greater.”¹⁸ FitzGerald also warned his father-in-law that Fianna Fáil planned to play on another characteristic—his notoriously short fuse—by provoking him into a rage. “As I believe they think this the chink in your armour, you should watch always for this line of attack.”¹⁹

Though he was not a particularly intellectual Catholic, his deep religious commitment cannot be doubted—as was made more than clear during the Mother and Child controversy. For much of his life he went to Mass every day, either at his local church in Donnybrook in south Dublin or in the Church of Adam and Eve on the quays on his way to the Four Courts.²⁰ He was, according to a former parish priest, “an example in every way”, both as a parishioner and a sodality member.²¹ His son Declan recalled that while he would say the Rosary every night, he never suggested the entire family should join in, as would have been reasonably common at the time. Instead, once the children had gone to bed, he would kneel down beside the fire in his study to perform his devotions alone, rather than insisting on conformity.²²

His pugnacity could frequently extend to religious matters—famously in an address to the Trinity College Philosophical Society in October 1948, when he referred several times to the “so-called Reformation”²³—a reference which caused considerable offence to Protestants. It was also, according to Patrick Lynch, quite deliberate. Lynch had drafted a speech for him, but the Taoiseach had rewritten parts of it, adding in the “so-called Reformation” reference as an expression of his dislike and suspicion of Trinity.²⁴

Apart from religion, John A. Costello’s other great comfort in life was his family. Evenings were spent in the study, the children listening to the radio while their father read briefs by the fire—he claimed to have learned to ignore noise and concentrate on his work in the Law Library, where he worked with conversations going on around him.²⁵ A profile in the (British) News Review in 1949 noted that “most of the family fun is found at home”, referring to the then Taoiseach’s liking for listening to music, playing bridge, taking his dachshund Slem for a morning walk, and reading thrillers.²⁶ What he referred to as his “pernicious habit” of reading detective stories did prove politically useful on one occasion, giving him the background knowledge to make an informed Dáil contribution about the training of police in detection techniques.²⁷

He had a ritual of going every spring to the Dublin Mountains to pick primroses with the family. The journey, given his famously fast driving, must have been a bit rough—his daughter Eavan later said looking at a painting of primroses which had belonged to her father made her feel carsick because it reminded her of those trips.²⁸

And then there was golf, to which he cheerfully admitted he was “addicted”, even in old age.²⁹ At the time of his election as Taoiseach, he was Captain of Portmarnock Golf Club, and an editorial in Irish Golf magazine remarked that his choice for both posts was wise, as “John Costello despite his very retiring manner makes one respect him and feel confidence in him.”³⁰

However, it would appear that despite his “addiction”, he wasn’t a particularly strong golfer—his son recalled that, even being generous, he was no more than “average”.³¹ The Irish Golf editorial noted that “he never played golf except for the fun and exercise of it”, and went on to pay a rather backhanded compliment: “When one has seen a golfer take the rough with the smooth in the most equable of manners, when he could miss a shortish putt without thinking the world was collapsing, then one can have confidence in the new Taoiseach. A broad fairway to him, though if he does find the rough he will get out of it calmly and well.”³² Every Sunday for years, Costello played in the same four-ball in Portmarnock, with Dick Browne of the ESB, an old school friend; Dick Rice, chairman of the Revenue Commissioners; and Seamus O’Connor, the Dublin City Sheriff.³³ It was on one such occasion in 1948 that he wrestled with the dilemma of whether he should accept the position of Taoiseach.

A less benign addiction was to smoking—he was an inveterate smoker of Churchman cigarettes, although according to his son he didn’t actually inhale.³⁴ In conversation, an observer noted, he had two habits—“twiddling a pencil, and keeping his cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth while talking”.³⁵ One of his more impassioned contributions to the Dáil was on the question of tobacco, which he argued was a necessity rather than a luxury, and should be taxed accordingly. “It enables everyone, whether rich or poor, to carry on his work … In addition to giving a certain amount of comfort, and soothing the nerves … it gives him a certain amount of relaxation, and enables him to do his work better.”³⁶

He was a famously dapper dresser.³⁷ In 1948, the British Lord Chancellor, William Jowitt, paid him a compliment by suggesting he might visit a tailor in Dublin while on holidays in Ireland “to see if I can approach nearer your standard” of sartorial elegance.³⁸

Another factor much remarked upon was Jack Costello’s modesty. Tom Finlay, later to be Chief Justice, recalled his “absolute humility” as one of the most remarkable things about him. He would have been taken aback if Finlay, as a young barrister appearing in court with him, let him through a door first.³⁹ Again, the News Review noted in 1949 that as Taoiseach, “the idea of anyone wanting to write an article about him still amuses him”.⁴⁰ The young Fine Gael activist Richie Ryan had the job of announcing Costello’s arrival into the Drawing Room of the Mansion House during the 1949 Fine Gael Ard Fheis. As he called out, “Ladies and Gentlemen—the Taoiseach!” he got an “almighty thump” in the back and heard Costello growl, “Cut that out, Richie, I don’t want any of that nonsense.”⁴¹

This modesty, as well as his personal kindness, had major political implications, as it played a role in his selection as the inter-party group’s candidate for Taoiseach. Noel Hartnett was a leading figure in Clann na Poblachta who fell out with Seán MacBride—and, by extension, with Costello—over the Mother and Child Scheme and the Battle of Baltinglass (a controversy over political influence in the filling of a post office appointment). In 1959 he wrote that Costello’s faults as a politician sprang “almost exclusively from excessive loyalty to his colleagues”. This loyalty, Hartnett said, “led him occasionally to defend actions and policies which would better have been condemned”. Hartnett pointed to another of Costello’s characteristics—his avoidance of bitterness—as the reason for his choice as Taoiseach, and pointed out that the members of all the parties in the Inter-party Governments “trusted and respected him”.⁴²

This judgment had been borne out at the time of his election by others, including High Court judge T.C. Kingsmill Moore, a former Independent senator who told Costello, “you were almost unique in the Dáil in that all parties liked and trusted you, no matter how bitterly opposed to you”.⁴³ Similarly, The O’Mahony, a former Fine Gael TD (who was also to fall out with Costello over the Baltinglass issue), wrote to him in 1948, “If you are able to keep that varied coalition of parties together I think you will have brought about a miracle, but from what I saw of you during the eleven years I was in the Dáil I don’t believe anyone else would ever have a chance.”⁴⁴

Reluctant he may have been. But John A. Costello, thanks to his background, his career, and most importantly his personality, was in 1948 in a pivotal position to make history.

Chapter 1  

After John A. Costello’s election as Taoiseach, one of his former schoolmates, John Keane, produced a photograph of a group of pupils at O’Connell School, and asked his children to guess which one grew up to be the leader of the Government. The clue, it turned out, was that Costello was the only boy in the photograph wearing a watch chain³—a suitable symbol of the future wealth and upper middle class status of one of the leading barristers of his day. The watch chain also fits neatly into the widespread perception that Costello, like some of his colleagues in Cumann na nGaedheal and later Fine Gael, was the product of a privileged background.

But in fact, unlike other members of the pro-Treaty leadership such as Kevin O’Higgins, Patrick Hogan and Patrick McGilligan, the future Taoiseach was not a past pupil of the elite private school Clongowes. He was a Christian Brothers boy, his father a mid-ranking civil servant, and his upbringing modest, though comfortable.⁴ If the watch chain was symbolic, it was symbolic of an aspiration rather than a status achieved. And the story of Jack Costello’s early years is the story of how hard work and natural ability allowed him to make good on that aspiration.

John Aloysius Costello was born on 20 June 1891, at the home of his parents at 13 Charleville Road⁵ on the northside of Dublin, not far from the city centre. The house is a pleasant mid-terrace redbrick with a bay window. Charleville Road, quiet and tree-lined, runs from Cabra Road down to the North Circular Road. Although Costello’s birth certificate describes it as being in Cabra, it’s actually closer to Phibsborough, just down from the massive gothic St Peter’s Church (begun in 1862, but only finished in 1911).

Costello was part of the last generation to grow to adulthood in an Ireland that was part of the British Empire. His birth came in the middle of political crisis—the Home Rule Party had split in December 1890 over the continued leadership of Charles Stuart Parnell, who was to die the following October. Costello’s year of birth also put him, in terms of age, almost exactly halfway between two of his great political rivals—Eamon de Valera, born in 1882, and Seán Lemass, born in 1899.

His father, John Costello senior, was born in Barefield in Clare on 25 May 1862,⁶ while his mother, Rose Callaghan, was three years younger and a native of Westmeath. The couple married in 1888.⁷ When he became Taoiseach, Jack Costello was asked if he was related to various branches of the Costello clan, but had to reply that he had “made only very little study of his genealogical tree”.⁸ However, he apparently spent boyhood summers in Barefield, playing with the local children and eating apples from the local orchard—whether with permission or not is not clear.⁹ In later years, he enjoyed telling his family stories about Clare, particularly the West Clare Railway immortalised by Percy French in the song “Are You Right There Michael”. Costello claimed a printed notice in one station outlined a revised timetable and ended with the warning that “there will be no last train”.¹⁰

Just four miles from Ennis, Barefield was less a village than a “small cluster of houses”, although it was significant enough to have an RIC hut under the command of a sergeant. It was described in the mid-1940s as “a very undulating parish, and its good and bad land is just as much mixed as its contour”. At that time, it had two pubs, a Catholic church, a post office, a dispensary, and a national school.¹¹ The latter, described in 1943 as a “fairly new, substantial four teacher school” was built on Costello family land.¹²

John Costello senior began working in the Registry of Deeds in Dublin in 1881, shortly before his nineteenth birthday.¹³ His progress through the ranks of the organisation was steady if unspectacular—by 1898 he was a Second Division Clerk,¹⁴ in 1903 he became one of three Higher Grade clerks,¹⁵ and a decade later he became a Staff Officer—a senior position but still quite a bit down the pecking order, behind the Registrar, First and Second Assistant Registrars and the Chief Clerk.¹⁶ He was in the same position when he retired.¹⁷ His brother Jim also went into the Civil Service, in his case the post office, but appears to have had a more successful career, as in later life he had a house on the fashionable Alma Road in Monkstown.¹⁸

Outside work, John Costello was a prominent temperance activist in Father Mathew Hall in Church Street for over 40 years.¹⁹ He gave lectures in the Hall on diverse subjects, ranging from “Some Incidents in the Land War of the Last Century”²⁰ to “The Rise of the Peasant in Ireland”²¹ and even “A holiday by the Cliffs of Moher”, which was to be “illustrated by limelight view”.²² Of more significance, he served as chairman of the Father Matthew Health Insurance Society, which among other things campaigned for the extension of medical benefits to Ireland.²³ He was also active in trade unionism, being involved in the formation of the Civil Service Guild²⁴ and serving on its Executive.²⁵ As an active politician, his son was to champion the cause of civil servants, helping to bring about an arbitration system to resolve disputes over pay.²⁶

Jack Costello recalled in later years that his father was “a great Parnellite”.²⁷ This was a common position in the capital, as Tom Garvin has pointed out: “bourgeois and working-class Dublin became Parnellite in contrast to the mainly anti-Parnellite countryside.”²⁸ Of course, the son was also a supporter of Home Rule, and of John Redmond, in the years leading up to the First World War—as he said later, “everyone in Ireland was a Home Ruler with the exception of a very small minority who were in the IRB …”²⁹ As we shall see in Chapter 5, Costello senior was to become a Fine Gael Councillor on Dublin Corporation after his retirement.

John and Rose Costello had three children. Mary, known as May in the family, was born the year after their marriage. She was to live on in the family home, caring for her parents, and never married. Thomas Joseph, who was a year younger, became a doctor and emigrated to England—as we shall see, he was a larger-than-life character, and in their university days overshadowed Jack, who was two years younger than him. Their father was keen on walks—perhaps in the nearby Phoenix Park—so keen, in fact, that Jack was put off organised walks for life.³⁰

By the time of the 1911 Census, the Costello family was living at 32 Rathdown Road, in the parish of Grangegorman. Rathdown Road is just across the North Circular from Charleville Road, and runs down towards what was then Grangegorman mental hospital. Number 32 is part of a long terrace of red brick houses, and is similar in appearance to Costello’s birthplace on Charleville Road, with a bay window on the ground floor and two windows upstairs.

Rose Costello’s family may have helped with the purchase of both these houses, which could have been slightly beyond John Costello’s salary as a relatively junior civil servant. Just three months after buying the house at Charleville Road, he signed an indenture of assignment with his brother-in-law, James Callaghan, a grocer in North King Street, and with John McKeever, a draper from Navan married to one of the Callaghan sisters.³¹ This suggests they had some financial interest in the house, perhaps after lending their brother-in-law some money. Another of the Callaghan sisters, Bridget, had an interest in the house in Rathdown Road, and in her will, made in November 1921, she left that interest to Rose, stipulating that after Rose’s death it should pass to May. In a codicil to the will made in 1930, after Rose’s death, the interest in 32 Rathdown Road was left to John senior and May.³²

John Aloysius became a pupil at St Joseph’s, Marino, in the autumn of 1903, when he was 12. The school (later better known as “Joey’s”) was run by the Christian Brothers. One of its three rooms was devoted to the 43 pupils in the intermediate (secondary) class. The 300 primary pupils were divided between the other two rooms.³³ Among his classmates was Dick Browne,³⁴ later Chairman of the Electricity Supply Board, who was Costello’s greatest friend, godfather to his son Declan, and one of his golfing partners on Sunday mornings in Portmarnock for many years.³⁵

As Marino had no senior classes at the time, the two friends transferred to the O’Connell School in North Richmond Street,³⁶ also run by the Christian Brothers. The school was named after Daniel O’Connell, who laid the foundation stone in 1828.³⁷ It prided itself on its success in the Intermediate Examinations, frequently boasting the highest number of passes and distinctions in the country.³⁸ The school’s centenary book in 1928 noted the number of senior Government officials it had produced, including Costello, who was then Attorney General, Dick Browne, who was a Senior Inspector of Taxes, and the Secretary of the Department of Local Government, E.P. McCarron. With some self-satisfaction, R.C. Geary (later Director of the Central Statistics Office) wrote, “Your ‘Richmond Street’ boy makes a good official. In the first place he possesses the necessary academic qualifications to place him high on the examination lists. He has, in addition, certain qualities which make him a good colleague. This is an essential point. However clever an official he may be, he has to pull with the team …”³⁹

As well as civil servants, the school produced a great many rebels, with more than 120 pupils or former students believed to have taken part in the 1916 Rising, including three of the 16 leaders who were executed—Eamonn Ceannt, Con Colbert, and Seán Heuston.⁴⁰ The latter, in fact, was among John A. Costello’s classmates.⁴¹ Other past pupils included President Seán T. O’Kelly, Taoiseach Seán Lemass, and Judge Cahir Davitt, a son of Land League founder Michael Davitt, who became President of the High Court in 1951.⁴² Other notable legal figures who attended the school were Ireland’s last Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Molony, and Aindrias Ó Caoimh and Charles Casey, both of whom became High Court judges after serving as Attorney General (Casey having been appointed to that position by Costello).⁴³

At O’Connell School, in a pattern that would be repeated throughout his education, the young Costello performed well academically, winning prizes and distinctions. He also improved as he went along—another pattern that would be repeated in college, at the Bar and in politics.

At the time, the State examination, the Intermediate, was divided into Junior, Middle and Senior Grades, the latter corresponding to the Leaving Certificate, which was introduced in 1924 (along with, confusingly, another examination known as the Intermediate Certificate, the equivalent of the old Junior Grade).⁴⁴ In the Middle Grade, in 1907, Costello received Honours results in English, French, Irish, Algebra, Trigonometry and Science, with passing grades in Arithmetic, Shorthand, Geometry and Latin. The results were good enough to win him a £3 book prize.⁴⁵ In his final year, 1908, he took honours in English, French, Irish, Arithmetic and Algebra, Trigonometry and Physics, and passed Geometry, winning £3 prizes for modern literature and experimental science, as well as a £1 prize in mathematics. It was a fairly broad education. Costello appears to have been keen on Science—he had the joint highest (in 1907) or highest (1908) hours spent at Science according to the school records.⁴⁶ More importantly, he won the Fanning Scholarship, worth a substantial £50 a year for three years,⁴⁷ which was to pay his college fees.

It had been a successful school career, and while Costello didn’t speak much of his time at the school in later life, he didn’t complain about it either.⁴⁸ The link with the school was played on by an enterprising 11-year-old when Costello was elected Taoiseach. Tom Fahy of Vernon Park in Clontarf wrote to congratulate him on his election—which he felt could best be marked by a free day. Unfortunately, there is no record of whether the new Taoiseach did, as suggested by Master Fahy, contact the school authorities to let his successors off for the day.⁴⁹

When Costello won the Fanning Scholarship in 1908, he was one of its first recipients. The scholarship, set up two years previously, aimed to pay the college fees of the son of a civil servant receiving the highest marks in the Senior Grade of the Intermediate. It stipulated that the person holding the scholarship should carry out his studies at UCD. According to Costello, who paid a visit to the founder of the Trust after receiving the scholarship, Francis A. Fanning was “a very strong Catholic” who wanted to encourage Irish students to go to the new National University rather than Trinity College, which “in those days was regarded as the bastion of the then Protestant Ascendancy”.⁵⁰

The institution which he joined was in a state of flux, to put it at its mildest. He was in the last group of students who attended 86 Stephen’s Green under the old Royal University—the next year the new National University was established under the 1908 Irish Universities Act (introduced by Irish Secretary Augustine Birrell to placate Catholic opinion). The Act joined UCD with the former Queen’s Colleges in Cork and Galway to form the NUI. In a foretaste of partition, the other Queen’s College, in Belfast, became a separate university.

Costello claimed in later life that the authorities dithered so much about faculty positions that they ended up appointing a number of professors to the wrong chairs. “There was general confusion and we had not merely … no Professors to lecture us, we had not even a chair to sit on, we were walking around Stephen’s Green wasting our time until the National University authorities made up their minds to give us some Professors to lecture us.”⁵¹ The complaint was an echo of that made at the time, in an editorial in the first edition of a student newspaper, the National Student: “… there has been little academic work done this year. The Professors have been occupied busily in securing their positions, in making boards and committees on which to sit, and then in sitting on them … There is a vague but general feeling that no attention is being paid to the students, that they are regarded as necessary evils, whose sole duty is to pay fees and keep quiet …”⁵²

The new college was small, with only 530 students in its first academic year, 1909–10, although numbers grew quickly, almost doubling (reaching 1,017) by 1916.⁵³ As George O’Brien, a future senator and professor of economics, noted, “We were few enough to get to know each other very well, even if some of us did not like each other very much. Indeed, some of the developments in the political history of Ireland in the years since the Treaty grew out of the affinities and dislikes of my contemporaries. Old alliances and old quarrels reappeared in the wider field of public life.”⁵⁴ Among Costello’s contemporaries in UCD were future ministers Kevin O’Higgins, Patrick McGilligan and Patrick Hogan; his successor as Attorney General after the change of government in 1932, Conor Maguire; and the leading solicitor Arthur Cox.

These young men and their fellow NUI graduates were to provide much of the leadership of the new Irish Free State, in politics, the Civil Service and the professions. Of course, they could not have foreseen that the then dominant Irish Parliamentary Party would be destroyed within a decade by Sinn Féin. According to O’Brien, “we took it for granted that, if Home Rule was achieved, we would be among the politicians of the new Ireland … So certain were we of the approach of Home Rule that some of our students neglected to prepare for a profession, believing that they would get a good job when self-government came …”⁵⁵ While Arthur Cox could not be accused of neglecting his studies, his enthusiasm for imminent Home Rule is clear from his diary for 1913, in which he counted down the days to the Bill coming into force.⁵⁶

Academically, Costello progressed in much the same way he had in school, starting off with mediocre results but quickly improving. He received a pass mark in his First Arts exam in 1909;⁵⁷ first class honours in Irish and French, as well as a pass in Biology, in 1910;⁵⁸ and graduated with a First in Irish and French in 1911.⁵⁹ His interest in Irish was later demonstrated in government when he established the Department of the Gaeltacht. He had travelled to the Aran Islands to learn Irish while still at school,⁶⁰ although the experiment was not an unqualified success. He later complained that the islanders were “much more concerned with picking up little scraps of English and getting me to talk English to them than they were about speaking Irish to me”.⁶¹ This perhaps explains why, despite his exam results, there was some doubt about his fluency. At a meeting of the Literary and Historical Society in March 1912 a motion was proposed criticising the Records and Correspondence Secretaries, Tom and Jack Costello, for “incompetence … in not being able to answer questions in Irish”. The motion was only defeated by 20 votes to 18.⁶²

Among the lecturers Costello got to know were James Murnaghan, later a judge of the Supreme Court, Swift MacNeill, then an Irish Party MP, and Arthur Clery, whose favourite pupil he was.⁶³ George O’Brien described the latter lecturer: “Clery was a bachelor who liked the society of young men. He used to invite us to very pleasant dinner parties where we met some of his own generation. He was kind to us and I appreciated his friendship at the time. I learned later that he was very bigoted against the British and against Protestants and a great extremist in politics, although he took no active part in revolutionary movements. I am afraid he influenced some young men in the direction of his own views and that he sowed the seeds of a good deal of bitterness.”⁶⁴ As O’Brien’s biographer makes clear, this somewhat jaundiced account may have been influenced by O’Brien’s dislike of John A. Costello.⁶⁵

As a later interviewer put it, “in college his interests were intellectual rather than athletic”,⁶⁶ but the young Costello did have some sporting interests—he was a member of a football club based at Goldsmith Street.⁶⁷ However, he was to have a more enduring interest in golf. He joined a golf club in Finglas,⁶⁸ a forerunner of his membership of clubs at Portmarnock, Milltown and Rossapenna, Co. Donegal. He also, at least occasionally, was prevailed upon to sing at musical evenings.⁶⁹ According to his children Declan and Eavan, he spoke in later years about singing at parties as a young man, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Ida, on the piano.⁷⁰ Costello also regaled his children with reminiscences of the 1907 Great Exhibition in Ballsbridge, with its giant water slide and a Zulu tent featuring “real live Africans”, obviously an exotic sight at the time.⁷¹

In July 1911, just turned 20, Costello wrote a lengthy and mildly amusing article for the National Student, the college magazine, contrasting the old Royal with the new National University, suggesting that he saw some improvement in the situation of students. He claimed that the Royal “was little better than a glorified Boarding and Day School … The residents … rose in the morning by rule, lived mechanically, and even voted in the Societies mechanically and as they were told. The outdoor students of the College came to lectures, met casually, chatted desultorily outside the lecture room, and dispersed.” The new structure had a higher purpose than the old, which had served merely as an exam factory. “The National has been created to send forth students better equipped mentally and bodily than heretofore; to produce students with broader views and wider knowledge … Its aim should be culture rather than erudition; learning rather than pedantry.” Exams, he suggested, were “a necessary evil, and must be tolerated … The importance attached to them should, however, be reduced to a minimum: the true end of a real University should be culture, not examination.”

Of his fellow students, he observed mordantly that “students always take themselves and their opinions seriously”, before going on to criticise certain “types” of student, which could be divided into sots and swots. Of the first, he wrote, “These gentlemen often accost some meek and unoffending student whom they wish to impress; buttonhole him and tell him of the number of times they were on the bend; how hard it is to study when in such a state; what head-aches they had after it; what daring tricks they had played on their professors; and what damage they had done to other people’s property. These gentlemen in their first year wish to make it believed that they are real wits and veritable roués!” (It is impossible to know who Costello had in mind when he was writing this, but it sounds rather like the “dissipated” student Kevin O’Higgins, as described by his biographer, a regular at Mooney’s pub in Harry Street.)⁷²

Costello had this to say about the swots: “They walk rapidly, at the sound of the bell, from the Library to the lecture hall and install themselves in a place convenient to the professor and without losing an instant. They are fearful of being late. They are fearful of losing some of the words of wisdom which fall from the learned professor’s lips. They are fearful of incurring his ire. They take copious and meticulous notes and accept his opinions as final without demur. The lecture finished, they hasten back to their interrupted studies. No loitering, no conversation, no stories—all study concentrated and unlimited. No Society ever sees them. At social functions they are conspicuous by their absence—nor are they missed. Their one desire is success in examinations, and their one aim is to stuff their brains with a store of book learning, thereby taking the shortest path to pedantry.”

This leads him on to extol the virtues of the College societies, which are beneficial and, in fact, indispensable. “By means of books we may come under the influence of dead genius; by means of social intercourse we may be influenced by living talent. For the formation of student character there must be frequent conversation between the students, they must live and work together, and must get to know each other. What a blank student life would be if it merely consisted of daily attendance at lectures!”

Given his experience in the Literary and Historical Society (the L&H), his assessment of the quality of debate there is interesting: “The ideas of the members of these societies may not, and seldom are, either strikingly original or alarmingly learned, but at all events by speaking in public they are taught self-confidence and self-mastery, and even from listening to commonplace and mediocre ideas there is something to be gained … The real raison d’être of College Societies is to be found in the fact they are conducive to culture and refinement, and that fluency of speech in public is as much an acquired talent as a natural gift.”⁷³ He was an example of the truth of this observation—his future success in politics and the law was built on his ability as a public speaker, an ability honed in college debates.

It is possible that involvement in college societies conferred culture and refinement on students, but a more immediate reward was status—especially in the L&H, success in which “was firmly established as a significant benchmark against which any ambitious student’s career in university was measured”.⁷⁴ As Costello later observed, the lack of resources under both the old Royal and the new National Universities denied students the university life known in older academic institutions, but “they made it for themselves by congregating around the steps of the National Library, and by their activities in the famous Literary and Historical Society”.⁷⁵

The Library steps, according to George O’Brien, “were the scenes of much conversation. The conversations on the Library steps in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist bring back vivid memories of the hours that we used to spend on the same spot …”⁷⁶ The L&H, meanwhile, was the place where “many of the young men who helped to establish the new Irish State from 1922 onwards received their first lessons in politics and public speeches”.⁷⁷ If UCD was where the future elite of the Irish Free State met, the L&H was where they cut their teeth, learned the arts of public speaking and of politics, and made friendships and enmities that were to last a lifetime. Those young men included John A. Costello. He later claimed that his first appearance in print was as a “Voice” during an address by Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell to the L&H in the Aula Maxima in 86 St Stephen’s Green. He “was at the back of the hall, a very young student in my first year, and very tentatively I am afraid shouted out ‘What about the new University?’”⁷⁸

A contemporary, slightly tongue in cheek, description of the L&H sets the scene: “About a hundred and twenty people, some eighty men and forty women, sit from 8 p.m. till 11 p.m. in a room decorated with grisly pictures of skeletons [meetings were held in the same room as medical lectures], and in an atmosphere almost solid with tobacco-smoke. The first hour is occupied with a ‘discussion of rules’. The majority of the meeting have not the least idea what the rules are, but a handful of men spend an hour heckling the officers of the Society with regard to them … The debate begins … It was perfectly obvious to me after listening to a very few of the speeches that the real object of a speaker was not to say something new or weighty … but to talk good nonsense …”⁷⁹

Chief among the hecklers was Costello’s brother, Tom, a flamboyant figure who had preceded him to UCD in 1907 and was studying medicine.⁸⁰ The elder Costello quickly made a name for himself as a tormentor of the Society’s officials: “There are some who expend, in inventing posers for the Record Secretary, a wealth of time and ability that, otherwise applied, would make them medallists of the society. But … [Mr] Costello … and others of that ilk prefer asking questions to making speeches. And the society would be much duller if they did not.”⁸¹ Arthur Cox, a friend and rival of Jack Costello’s, described Tom as “dominant in private business. Caring little for more formal debate, he seemed to be for ever in opposition, thundering from the topmost bench down on the committee at their table below, moving votes of censure and perpetually taking the officers to task for some breach of Palgrave’s Parliamentary Procedure which ruled all our proceedings. Had he remained in Ireland … he would have been a leader.”⁸² Another contemporary, Michael McGilligan, said, “Tom was at that time the more dynamic of the two. Tom laid about him in the Society … Jack … was not then the Costello of the Courts …”⁸³

The younger Costello was very much overshadowed in his first few years in college by his brother, as is shown in the pages of the National Student, where Tom was frequently a target for good-natured banter. When Jack was mentioned, it was usually in relation to his more flamboyant brother.⁸⁴ The younger Costello made his maiden speech to the L&H in November 1908, shortly after starting in UCD. The then auditor, Tom Bodkin, later a good friend, remembered the speech as being “on the trite subject: ‘That the pen is mightier than the sword’”,⁸⁵⁸⁶—