Nostalgia: Year of Vat on children’s shoes and efforts to influence the Áras

Three memories would live on long after most of the other details of the first general election of 1982 were forgotten.

The first would be, obviously, that the election of Thursday, February 18, was only the first general election of 1982.

The second would be the reason that the minority Fine Gael and Labour government collapsed suddenly — the budget decision to put Vat on children’s shoes, a proposal that would haunt the then finance minister John Bruton for the rest of his career.

The 17th government, in place only seven months, was dealing with an economy in rag order. “The only certainty today as Minister for Finance Mr John Bruton, began to unfold the awful secrets of the budget,” we reported on our front page that day, “was that it would fulfil its promise of being the harshest in twenty years”.

Two left-wing TDs, Independent Jim Kemmy, from Limerick, and Sinn Féin The Workers’ Party’s Joe Sherlock, from Mallow, withdrew their support and the minority government collapsed.

Influence

The third reason the first 1982 election would be remembered was a series of attempts by Fianna Fáil and Independent TDs to contact president Patrick Hillery to influence him in the execution of his duties. These occurred against a backdrop of serious upheaval in the opposition (our top story a week earlier, “Rebel Cork real test for Haughey”, had begun: “Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey is facing a revolt of a sizeable group of his party membership in County Cork”).

On the evening of Wednesday, January 27, 1982, taoiseach Garret FitzGerald headed to Áras an Uachtaráin to seek from president Hillery an immediate dissolution of the Dáil. Almost simultaneously, the Fianna Fáil front bench issued a statement encouraging the president, a former Fianna Fáil minister and European commissioner, not to grant the dissolution and instead to allow Fianna Fáil to form a government. 

This would have saved the party the bother of an election, and it would have shored up Haughey’s leadership.

Powers

It is often forgotten that Irish presidents have few real powers, but they do have the power to refer bills to the Supreme Court to test their constitutionality, and they also have the power “in his absolute discretion” or “as a chomhairle féin” to refuse a dissolution of the Dáil if a taoiseach has “ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann”.

When FitzGerald arrived at the Áras, he learned that a number of opposition TDs had attempted to contact the president, among them former foreign minister Brian Lenihan and former taoiseach Haughey, who was alleged to have threatened Hillery’s aide-de-camp, captain Anthony Barber, when he refused to put him through.

Hillery was outraged by the behaviour of his former party colleagues, and it has been posited that he was also influenced by a conflict between “in his absolute discretion” and “as a chomhairle féin”, which is usually translated as “under his own counsel”.

Where there is a conflict between the Irish and English versions of the Constitution, the Irish version takes precedence, and “under his own counsel” has been interpreted as meaning that the president cannot be influenced by others in the execution of this particular duty.

Dissolution

Hillery granted FitzGerald the dissolution of the Dáil.

The next day, as commander-in-chief of the Irish army, the president ordered the army’s chief of staff to put a note on captain Barber’s service record, in an effort to protect the young soldier from any future retribution from the Haughey camp.

Ironically, the matter would resurface during the 1990 presidential election, effectively scuppering Lenihan’s own bid at the Áras.

The campaign was fought on the economy, with all parties playing down the need for budget cuts. “FF’s family budget” was our headline on Friday, February 12, with the subheading “Families would have more money”. The next day, we led with “FF budget proposals ‘myopic’ – Garret”.

The day after the election, our headline was “Trend to FF, but FG fight back”.

In the end, with 84 seats needed for a majority, Fianna Fáil emerged with the largest number of seats, 81, and a deal was done with Socialist TD Tony Gregory to support Haughey in his bid to be taoiseach. Independent Fianna Fáil TD Neil Blaney joined in that support, as did Sherlock and the other two Sinn Féin The Workers’ Party TDs.

An expected, a Fianna Fáil leadership challenge by Des O’Malley “vanished like snow in a quick thaw”, we reported on February 25. On Tuesday, March 9, our headline was “It has to be Haughey”. It did, but eight months later, the 18th government would collapse on a motion of no confidence.