'I changed my view on legacy of Dev, TV doc may sway you too'

Dev - a three-letter word that encapsulates one of the most consequential figures in Irish history.

Admire or abhor him, there are few people who have had as much influence on Irish life as Éamon de Valera.

Fifty years ago today his funeral took place in Dublin. A day of national mourning, over 200,000 people paid tribute to the statesman along the three-mile funeral route from Dublin city centre to Glasnevin.

The cortege was lined with soldiers, schoolchildren, elderly veterans, and ordinary citizens pausing to mark the end of an era. In the days before, thousands more queued for hours to pay their respects to the man known as The Chief as he lay in state in Dublin Castle.

For the past six months, I have had the privilege of producing a new two-part documentary series for RTÉ1, the first episode of which airs tomorrow evening.

Presented by David McCullagh, who authored a two-volume biography about the rise and rule of Éamon de Valera, the films examine the life of the man who was born in Manhattan, escaped a life of rural poverty, helped steer Ireland to national sovereignty, and served as Taoiseach for 21 years and later as President for 14 more. He shaped Irish life over the better part of four decades.

de Valera died five years before I was born. As a Leaving Cert history student in the 1990s, I wasn’t a fan. Shaped by Neil Jordan’s 1996 film, Michael Collins, and the broad brushstrokes of the curriculum, I blamed Dev for the Civil War and the dominance of the Church. I even bristled when school friends tried to nickname me Dev.

However, after producing a number of history documentaries during the decade of centenaries, I appreciate it’s impossible to distil his political career of 57 years to black or white judgments.

Asked on his 80th birthday what were some of his happiest memories - he said he had a lot of happy memories - and a lot of sad ones too. He mentioned his scholarship to Blackrock College, his marriage to Sinéad Flanagan, and his 1918 election victory, but didn’t elaborate on the sad memories. He had quite a few.

At the age of two-and-a-half, de Valera was sent by his mother from Manhattan back to her home place in Bruree, Co. Limerick, to be reared by his grandmother. He was not reunited with his mother when she remarried and had two more children, nor when his grandmother died when he was 12.

Later, in his thirties, many of his colleagues from the 1916 Rising were executed. During the Civil War, former comrades on both sides were senselessly killed. His third son, Brian, died, aged 20, in a riding accident in Phoenix Park in 1936.

That is more than enough loss and trauma for one person.

For a man often caricatured as austere and aloof, those private griefs - a lost mother, executed comrades, and the death of a beloved son - suggest a life marked as much by sorrow as by triumph.

de Valera was always described as ‘dignified’ and he reminds me a lot of my own grandfather who was born in 1916 and worked hard to rear and educate six children.

He was a Fianna Fáil man and a dedicated church-goer. I now understand better the popularity of de Valera to my grandfather’s generation.

Dev was upstanding, intelligent, well-presented, devout. A pillar of society to counter the stereotypes of drunken, fighting, wild Irishmen that the Irish had been characterised as for so long.

To his detractors, de Valera was a conservative misogynist, closed to the outside world and intolerant of those who didn’t share his opinions or perspectives.

He presided over a country that allowed the incarceration of women and children in Mother and Baby Homes, Magdalene Laundries, and Industrial Schools.

His political tenure oversaw the mass migration of millions of Irish people in search of a better life. And yet, he was also one of Europe’s most successful politicians, winning elections time and again.

The documentaries tease out his major life milestones and nuanced legacy, visiting Manhattan, London, and Spike Island along the journey.

David McCullagh examines de Valera’s original birth certificate (he wasn’t always Éamon de Valera!), sits at the very table Dev sat at in Beál na Bláth on the morning of Michael Collins’ death, and studies the infamous Oath in the Dáil ledger which de Valera shakily signed five years after rejecting the Treaty.

The conclusion of each programme features a unique gathering in the historic St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle (where de Valera laid in state 50 years ago) that gives the citizens of 2025 their say.

Actor Marcus Lamb performs a verbatim performance of two of de Valera’s most famous speeches - which still resonate today. And a cocktail of opinion from leading historians prompts the audience to contribute their own reassessment of de Valera’s legacy, through the prism of contemporary eyes.

It is easy to dismiss ‘de Valera’s Ireland’ as a misogynistic, oppressive, Church-dominated country, but do we owe some debt of gratitude to a man who devoted his life to establishing Ireland as an independent sovereign state? Tune in to reassess your own opinion on the man.

Watch Dev: Rise + Rule on RTÉ1 on Wednesday, September 3, and Wednesday, September 10, at 9.30pm.