Emmet Stagg

Labour Party politician Emmet Stagg, who has died at the age of 79, was a TD for 29 years from 1987 to 2016 and served as minister of state in two successive coalition governments between 1993 and 1997. He was Labour Chief Whip for nine years from 2007 to 2016.

Prominent on Labour’s left wing in his early years with the party, he frequently clashed with the leadership and was ousted as vice-chairperson in 1989 after opposing the expulsion of Militant Tendency members. At times he was even seen as an alternative leader to Dick Spring.

In February 1992, Stagg resigned from the parliamentary party, stating Labour was about to go into coalition and he would “never vote for a right-wing taoiseach from Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael”. He was reportedly involved along with Labour colleague and future president Michael D Higgins in negotiations with New Agenda, a group that broke away from the Workers’ Party and later became Democratic Left.

However, the Labour leadership persuaded the two dissidents to change their minds. Stagg rejoined the parliamentary party shortly after he had left. He later seconded a motion at a special conference that Labour should join a Partnership Government with Fianna Fáil under Albert Reynolds. He was applauded in the course of his address to the 1,300 delegates at the National Concert Hall but, in a rare gesture for a politician, Stagg asked his listeners to hold off until the end of his speech as he only had three minutes.

The Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition took office in January 1993, with Higgins as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht and Stagg as a minister of state at the Department of the Environment with special responsibility for housing and urban renewal.

Stagg’s IRA activist brother Frank, known also as Proinsias, made international headlines when he died on hunger strike in a British prison on February 12, 1976, after being refused a transfer to Northern Ireland.

One of 13 children, Emmet Martin Stagg was born on October 1, 1944, into a staunchly Fianna Fáil family who lived on a 14-acre farm at Hollymount, County Mayo. He used to joke that it was “an acre each”. Stagg was educated at Ballinrobe Christian Brothers’ School and Kevin Street College of Technology.

He became a left-winger by accident in fifth year of secondary school after reading George Bernard Shaw’s book Everybody’s Political What’s What? in preparation for a debate on socialism organised by the Legion of Mary. He liked to recall how he did so well in the debate it earned him a slap and he was called a “communist brat”. He did have a very brief involvement with the Communist Party later in life but Labour was his true home.

He was employed as a technologist in the Department of Social Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and his wife Mary recalled at his funeral that Stagg had to obtain permission from the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, to work in what was considered a Protestant environment.

Emmet Stagg had a long and distinguished political career

The couple got married in 1968 and settled in the Co Kildare village of Straffan where, with Mary’s encouragement, he joined the local Labour Party branch.

He was elected for Labour to Kildare County Council in 1979 as a representative of the Celbridge area, serving 14 years until 1993 and with a further term from 1999 to 2003. He first stood for the Dáil in the 1987 general election as the sole Labour candidate in the Kildare constituency where he got the second-highest number of first preferences and won a seat on the fifth count.

Stagg held his seat in the 1989 and 1992 general elections, following which the constituency was divided in two. He subsequently ran in Kildare North, holding his seat in four general elections before losing out in 2016. He ran again without success four years later in 2020 when he was the oldest candidate at 75 in that year’s general election.

In November 1994, he was sitting alone in his car at the Phoenix Park when a young man approached on a bicycle and later got into the vehicle. Gardaí stopped by and advised Stagg to leave the area, which was frequented by male prostitutes. The episode was leaked to the media and received widespread coverage. Stagg was questioned by gardaí but no charges were filed. In a statement later, he said there was no evidence the young man in his car was a prostitute and he had never been involved with such people.

A different high-profile episode took place during a Dáil debate on December 11, 2009, when he incurred the anger of the normally relaxed Green Party TD Paul Gogarty who said: “With all due respect, in the most unparliamentary language, f **k you, Deputy Stagg. F**k you.” Gogarty immediately apologised.

In her eulogy, Mary said her husband made two requests during his final illness: “One, to Henry before Christmas, when we thought he wasn’t going to make it: a grave with a view. And one more recently to me: no wicker coffin. When I asked why, he said in his own mischievous way: ‘Because if I wake up, I don’t want to be able to see out.’”

Emmet Stagg died peacefully at St Brigid’s Hospice in the Curragh, on St Patrick’s Day. The chief mourners at the funeral mass in Straffan last Thursday were his wife Mary, son Henry, daughter Gillian, other relatives and a wide circle of friends.