Truth in the news... how FF sold out its own in the Irish Press saga

NO ONE should be surprised that Eamon de Valera used the Irish Press for his own purposes, because he saw newspapers as a tool of political power and he had an almost insatiable need for such power.

Indeed, many believe this lust for power led to the Civil War, but he was very different about money matters, with the result that the RTÉ depiction of him on Tuesday's programme on the Irish Press saga was in some ways seriously distorted. When de Valera went to the US to raise money for the Irish Press in the late 1920s he explained that rather than reside in splendid subservience, he would prefer to be independent and live in frugal comfort. To materially-minded people, this may seem like sentimental twaddle, but it was a romanticised vision that had its own appeal. For those who believed in de Valera, there was something compelling and realistic about his inner vision espousing a dream of attainable comfort rather than the fantasy of unimaginable affluence.

Fianna Fáil appealed strongly to the underprivileged by advocating the redistribution of unutilised land and a more equitable distribution of the country's wealth to alleviate the kind of conditions that were evident even on the streets outside Leinster House. "One evening," de Valera told the Dáil, "I happened to be walking along Merrion Square about five or six o'clock and there I saw little children with their hands stuck down in the bins that are put outside doors."