TV review: The Seven Ages of Noël Browne

The RTÉ documentary features contributions from the late politicians family, as well as interviews recorded shortly before his death 

Noël Browne and his wife Nula Suchet.

There have always been two opposing visions of the former Minister for Health Dr Noël Browne: a tortured but compassionate genius, or a crank who argued with everyone.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Browne was certainly a challenger of consensus, driven by a passion to reform our health service. The trouble was that he never learned to play politics, even when it might have saved him and his Mother and Child Scheme, a radical programme that drew the wrath of the medical profession as well as the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid.

When McQuaid made clear his objections to the scheme, neither Browne’s own party nor the government backed him. The Taoiseach, John A Costello, even accused him of grandstanding. “He was anxious to become a martyr,” Costello said. “It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.” 

Noel Browne during demonstrations outside the American embassy in Dublin in 1962. Picture: Gordon Standing

In 1997, shortly before his death, Browne gave a lengthy interview to producer and screen writer James Black. Filmed in Browne's Connemara home, it was intended to form the basis of a screenplay which Black hoped to make but he died shortly afterwards of a rare disease. Black’s widow, Nula Suchet, offered the footage to Yellow Asylum Films for this documentary which was made with the participation of Browne’s two daughters, Ruth and Susan.

They return to the old cottage in Cloughmore, in Connemara, where Browne spent his final years wife, Phyllis. He had by then lived a full but unsettling life, including the early deaths of his parents.

The funeral of Noël Browne in Co Galway in 1997. 

As Minister for Health, Browne enjoyed early success with the eradication of tuberculosis, a disease that had killed several family members and nearly took his own life. Yet he never seemed to enjoy or even acknowledge his successes, telling Black: “I don’t think anybody is ever remembered, really. We all disappear into great eternity.” 

Surprisingly, the documentary gives little detail of the Mother and Child Scheme which led to his downfall, but overall it’s an impressive account of the dramatic life of a giant of Irish politics.

• The Seven Ages of Noël Browne is available on the RTÉ Player