Desmond O’malley
Truculent politician who stood firm against the IRA and was ‘the best Taoiseach Ireland never had’
DESMOND O’MALLEY, who has died aged 82, was Minister for Justice in the Irish government between 1970 and 1973. As such, he was central to countering in the Republic the IRA campaign launched in those years to drive the British out of Northern Ireland.
Born in Limerick on February 2 1939, the son of a local solicitor, and a solicitor himself, he was catapulted into politics when less than 30, winning a by-election for a seat vacated by the sudden death of a glamorous uncle, Donogh O’malley, a minister in Jack Lynch’s Fianna Fáil government.
Described jocosely as “the Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, Des, as he was known, impressed Lynch sufficiently to be made Minister for Justice in 1970, following a crisis when two ministers, including the future Taoiseach Charles Haughey, were sacked. They were suspected of involvement in an attempt to import arms to defend Catholics in Northern Ireland, who had been attacked by Orange mobs and not protected by the police.
These attacks provided a pretext for the IRA, both north and south, to renew the armed struggle for a united Ireland. Some in Fianna Fáil viewed them ambivalently, but not Lynch or O’malley. They established an all-judge court to try IRA suspects and made the opinion of a senior police officer evidence of IRA membership.
Where Lynch was quietly firm, O’malley, a stocky, tense, chainsmoking young man with wavy black hair, a set expression and a rasping nasal voice, was truculent, and drew upon himself the ire of the IRA. They burnt his wife’s family home in Northern Ireland and threatened O’malley himself, forcing him to move from house to house, keeping a revolver under his pillow at night.
It distracted him from other reforms, but he found time to irk barristers by allowing solicitors to share their age-old monopoly of advocacy in the superior courts. Always his own man, O’malley never suffered dissent readily and eased his controlling head of department into early retirement.
Lynch was delighted with his young protégé, who was a fine debater, and predicted that O’malley would be Taoiseach one day. It did not happen. Haughey re-emerged from the political wilderness to be elected leader of Fianna Fáil and succeed Lynch as Taoiseach in 1979. O’malley, who had backed Haughey’s opponent, survived as Industry Minister, in which capacity he sought unsuccessfully to promote a nuclear power station.
O’malley was not a man to bury the hatchet. He joined in several heaves to unseat Haughey, who hit back; in 1984, when the party was in opposition, he had O’malley expelled. “I stand by the Republic,” O’malley had concluded his parting speech, refusing to vote with Fianna Fáil, who were currying favour with the Catholic Church by opposing liberalisation of the sale of contraceptives.
A year later, he joined disenchanted members of Fianna Fáil and some others to found the Progressive Democrats, known as the PDS. With O’malley as leader, the PDS eschewed Haughey’s uncompromising nationalism, were socially liberal and favoured less state involvement and lower taxes to revive the floundering economy.
A general election in 1989 left Haughey needing the support of the six PDS in the Dáil to remain in government. An unlikely coalition emerged, which worked well, with tax reductions and other PD policies being adopted. Early in 1992, however, O’malley insisted on Haughey’s resignation when it was revealed that as Taoiseach in 1982 he had ordered the telephones of critical journalists to be tapped.
It was more difficult to get along with Haughey’s successor, the abrasive Albert Reynolds. The government broke up when Reynolds described as dishonest O’malley’s evidence to a tribunal examining malpractices in the beef industry.
The PDS were consigned to opposition after the subsequent general election and O’malley resigned the leadership. He remained on as a supportive backbencher until 2002.
When, in these years, Haughey and several ministers who served under him were exposed as financially corrupt, O’malley seemed vindicated. As a figure of unquestioned if cranky rectitude whose policies had been prescient, he enjoyed acclaim as the lost leader who might have saved Fianna Fáil, the best Taoiseach the country never had.
Retirement allowed O’malley more time with his devoted wife and six children, often at their Connemara retreat. He indulged his interest in racing and golf. Although sometimes grumpy, he remained sociable; his fund of stories, ripe judgments and salty humour made him good company.
He made occasional pronouncements. Criticising high fees exacted by leading law firms during the economic crash, he remarked that “their system of charging – in advance by the hour – is the same one used in calculating remuneration for a profession even older than the law.”
In his last months, although stricken, O’malley took up the cudgels defending his hero Jack Lynch, who was accused in a much publicised work of slanted historical scholarship of behaving dishonourably during the “Arms Crisis” in 1970.
O’malley was predeceased by his wife Pat Mcaleer and is survived by six children. One daughter, Fiona, sat in the Dail for the now defunct PD party.
Desmond O’malley, born February 2 1939, died July 21 2021