The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (20 page)

Deputy Flinn drew attention to the fact that Michael Davis was a vice-chairman of his party and was opposing his own minister. He concluded that all nine Mayo TDs were as one on this issue and stated that Mayo was united, preferring to see their County Council abolished, rather than to have something imposed on them by a central authority.

‘Unless we have to assume that he is a superman, unless we are prepared to assume that some special inspiration from heaven has given him the wisdom which enables him to know in relation to this County Council more than Cumann na nGaedheal, more than Fianna Fáil, more than Labour, more than priests and people know about it, we must assume he is a superman of a different character, a man whose sole supermanship is in the claim to override the organised, united, public opinion of a county on a matter of which they have full and complete knowledge.'

He went on to express two possible justifications for this attitude. ‘One explanation,' he said, ‘is that the minister does actually believe himself to be the legitimate over-rider of the people, that he has a malignant opposition to the rights of the people to express an effective opinion in relation to their own local government. That is one explanation. The other is downright stupidity. I think it is downright stupidity at the back of all this … He had to break the County Council rather than his own pride.'
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Deputy Seán T. O'Kelly was also highly critical of Richard Mulcahy, ‘the would-be Napoleon, the pocket battleship, the pocket dreadnought of the Free State, that fears nothing.' He read into the Dáil minutes details of the December meeting of Mayo library committee.

President Cosgrave rose to make a robust defence of Richard Mulcahy. He may not have had anything new to say on the matter but he seemed determined to show his support for his beleaguered Minister for Local Government. He made reference to the
Catholic Bulletin
, in particular the list of questions it had published in its January 1931 issue. President Cosgrave claimed, ‘I have not read that paper since it committed what was to my mind a very serious mistake against Christianity; that was a criticism of the late General Collins after his death.'

‘Glory be to God,' replied Deputy O'Kelly. ‘If that be want of Christianity I hope the President will examine his own conscience.'

‘I do,' said Cosgrave, ‘very often.'
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Deputy O'Kelly suggested a solution to the impasse. ‘An effort should be made to get Miss Dunbar married to some eligible member of the County Council,' he said, ‘and thereby get her out of an awkward position and the government out of its present mess … I wonder will the president look round the county and see if there is any eligible young fellow who might get him out of a scrape, for at present he is in a bad way?'

President Cosgrave stood by Richard Mulcahy and the Local Appointments Commission, taking the debate through the various measures that had led to the installation of Miss Dunbar Harrison as Mayo county librarian.

‘What about the president's own party?' asked Deputy Clery. ‘The chairman of the party introduced this motion.' ‘I did not interrupt the deputy when he was speaking,' replied the president, ‘and he spoke at great length. I believe he invited members of this party to go into the division lobby along with him. They know what to do, but they will not be attracted by that sort of clap-trap.'

‘You never know,' replied Clery.
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Deputy Eamon de Valera intervened, squandering much time and energy in a squabble with the Ceann Comhairle over standing orders and procedural matters, the withdrawal of the Fianna Fáil amendment and the allowing of a similarly worded amendment from Deputy Davis. The Ceann Comhairle denied any bias and stated that he had merely been trying to be helpful, expediting the business of the house. Deputy de Valera eventually came round to the substance of the debate. In the first place, he was against the appointment of Miss Dunbar Harrison because he fundamentally disagreed with centralisation. Then there was the matter of religion. ‘I say that if I had a vote on a local body,' he said, ‘and if there were two qualified people who had to deal with a Catholic community, and if one was a Catholic and the other a Protestant, I would unhesitatingly vote for the Catholic. Let us be clear and let us know where we are.'

He went on to argue that libraries should be treated similarly to schools. ‘If this librarian were simply a sort of clerk,' he said, ‘who attended to somebody who came in and handed out a book which that person asked for, then I would not have any hesitation in saying that it was not an educational position, and that there was no reason whatever for introducing religion in that case. The more, however, I examine the question, the more I satisfy myself that if the library system were meant to achieve anything, it should be an educational system, and that the work of the librarian should be actively to interest people in reading books, and that it should not be a mere passive position simply of handing down books.

‘I say if it is a mere passive position of handing down books that are asked for, then the librarian has no particular duty for which religion should be regarded as a qualification, but if the librarian goes round to the homes of the people trying to interest them in books, sees the children in the schools and asks these children to bring home certain books, or asks what books their parents would like to read; if it is active work of a propagandist educational character – and I believe it must be such if it is to be of any value at all and worth the money spent on it – then I say the people of Mayo, in a county where, I think – I forget the figures – over 98 per cent of the population is Catholic, are justified in insisting upon a Catholic librarian …

‘If the library system is an educational system, the same freedom should be accorded, and whatever is necessary to give the Protestant community their facilities, then it should be provided, but do not try to meet the difficulty in such a way as you are doing in Mayo.'
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Deputy Thomas Mullins, an independent republican, pointed out the irony that the Minister for Local Government was also chairman of the Gaeltacht Commission which had been set up to investigate how best to preserve the Irish language. He condemned Richard Mulcahy as ‘one who out-Neros Nero. And who is more dictatorial than the Spanish Inquisition, presiding over the Department of Local Government, telling the people of Mayo – remember they are only bog-men and do not matter – to accept his instructions or to get out. Be it said to the credit of Mayo County Council they did get out rather than bend the knee.'

Deputy Mullins was particularly critical of the religious, sectarian attitude introduced by some deputies. ‘There is plenty of material to damn the minister,' he said, ‘and to crucify him fifteen times over, without introducing any other aspect.' However, despite his reservations Deputy Mullins was still in favour of the amendment.

Deputy Frank Aiken argued that in the old days ‘it was said that local bodies were corrupt in twopence-halfpenny matters. But these are the gentlemen who are corrupt in matters of hundreds and thousands of pounds.'
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As the debate was nearing its end, Richard Mulcahy made his defence at length. He defended the actions of his department. ‘We might have mandamused the council,' he said, ‘and got an order from the court that the Mayo County Council should so act. We did not do so for the reason that in the final minutes of the Mayo County Council dealing with the matter they instructed their solicitor to take the fullest possible steps to resist the mandamus and they decided that they would defer until their next meeting what they would do about striking a library rate. There was no reason in the first place why the rate-payers of Mayo should be saddled with the cost of mandamus proceedings and there was no reason in my opinion why I, as representing this assembly, should allow the Mayo County Council to put us in the position that they had to evade their statutory duties by declining to provide the necessary funds for the carrying on of the library.'

Mulcahy was particularly critical of Deputy de Valera's remarks. ‘I say that the deputy has gone as near saying as constitutionally he can, that no Protestant librarian should be appointed to county libraries in this country.'

He also mentioned that there had been Protestant librarians working in the Free State. ‘I do not think that you can have one religious policy in Mayo and another in Leix,' he said. ‘I am in the position as Minister for Local Government of having an official document giving the greatest possible praise to a Protestant county librarian in one county and condemning the idea of having a Protestant as librarian in another county … I have nothing to show me that a Protestant librarian can be a danger to faith more or less in Mayo, but not in some other county. As an ordinary lay Irishman, I deny that County Mayo is any more Catholic than my own native county or any other county.'

As he neared the conclusion of his defence, Richard Mulcahy raised the issue of finance, criticising Mayo County Council's expenditure and in effect telling the people of Mayo that they were better off with a commissioner controlling the purse strings. ‘I believe the people of Mayo,' he said, ‘are people who pay their rates pretty well up to date, and the people of Mayo who responded to a demand from the County Council in the year 1928-29 by giving them £71,000 odd to carry on their administration had to respond two years afterwards, in the year 1930-31, by giving them an additional £51,000.'

‘The minister is attacking his own party on the council,' protested Deputy Walsh.

‘I am being attacked by my own party,' replied Minister Mulcahy.

‘He is now attacking them.'

‘I am telling my own party that it might not be a bad day's work done on the ordinary administration side.'

‘Let him test public opinion and he will know it,' added Deputy Walsh.

‘There was just one other point which I might answer,' continued Richard Mulcahy. ‘Deputy Walsh is full of talk here.'

‘He wants your job,' suggested Deputy Sheehy from Cork by way of explanation.

‘He gets more coherent when he goes down to Mayo,' alleged Mulcahy, ‘and you get somehow to understand him better when he speaks from a platform in Mayo, as reported in some of the local papers, than you do when hearing him here on certain matters. I think the same might be said of Deputy Clery and Deputy Ruttledge.'

‘Crusaders,' exclaimed Deputy Gorey.

‘Deputy Gorey is more at home with his bulls in Kilkenny,' jeered Mr Kennedy.

‘We are told that we would not have stood by the law in County Mayo were it not that there was a Dublin by-election on, that the freemasons dictated to us – that we had to stand by the appointment of this lady, and that we knuckled under to the freemasons because there was a by-election in County Dublin,' concluded Richard Mulcahy. He then proceeded to go into forensic detail with regard to his party's electoral support in County Dublin and argued that they had no need for any extra votes there. Their candidate had received 35,362 votes as opposed to 15,024 for the Fianna Fáil candidate. ‘Deputies on the opposite side ought to read their own papers,' he advised, ‘Catholic journalism to be effective and to be truly Catholic needs first of all to be fair. We have comments from the great Catholic party over there who are going to replace the bishops in telling us …'

‘No, no; it is the minister who is going to replace the bishops in the west of Ireland,' interrupted Deputy Walsh.

Richard Mulcahy continued: ‘that in the matter of doctors and librarians we should be fair. They have to answer, not only to the people here and to one another, but they have to answer some place else for the methods they employ to try to establish the Kingdom of God here on earth.'

The Dáil was divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 62. The Mayo deputies, Michael Davis and Mark Henry, sided against their party, but were not joined by any of their Cumann na nGaedheal colleagues. The Farmers' Party and the independent deputies in the main, voted against the amendment. It was solidly supported by Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, the Minister for Justice, was the only Mayo TD to support the government.

The government had prevailed. Later, at that same sitting of the Dáil, Deputy Ruttledge's long-delayed motion on the dissolution of Mayo County Council was put forward. ‘That the Dáil disapproves of the action of the Minister for Local Government and public health in dissolving the Mayo County Council, and demands its immediate restoration.' As this substantive matter had already been dealt with, this was voted on without debate. The Dáil divided on this occasion: Tá, 60; Níl, 73. Deputy Michael Davis abstained.

The Irish Times
labelled the Dáil debate ‘The Battle of the Books'. ‘Mr Davis,' it wrote, ‘from whom we cannot withhold our sympathy, was torn between two loyalties. He is not merely a member of the government party, but is a chairman of that party in the Dáil. On the other hand, he was chairman of the dissolved County Council, and we may assume that the local pressure which compelled him thus to challenge his own government and, perhaps to endanger its very existence, was exceedingly strong. He must have known that all the government's opponents in the house would rally joyfully to his amendment. Fortunately, the debate and its result not only have not impaired the government's position, but have strengthened it. Mr Davis' amendment has been defeated by seventy-three votes to sixty-two – a quite substantial majority for the cause of political and religious tolerance.'

The Irish Times
went on to concede that ‘the only case for the amendment was that County Mayo is now enduring the pangs of intellectual famine. Its library service is virtually at a standstill, and the books from more than one hundred rural centres are lying idle at Castlebar. This is a sad state of things and its continuance will do harm; but infinitely greater harm would have been done by the Dáil's refusal to support the government's liberal and enlightened policy.'
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