Programme failed to give Costello his due

I WRITE concerning this week’s programme about TK Whitaker on TG4.

As the first biographer of John A Costello (Compromise Taoiseach, 2007) and most recently of Éamon de Valera (Irish: Catholic: Visionary 2010), I am surprised at the treatment of both gentlemen in the programme. Neither Costello nor his 1954-7 Government received any mention. Yet it was this Government that made the ground-making decision to appoint the young TK Whitaker to head the Department Finance during the Financial Crisis, on 30 May 1956. That same summer Costello outlined a new radical detailed economic policy, which remained a central part of future planning. TK Whitaker himself acknowledged that Gerard Sweetman, Minister of Finance, was a singularly unfortunate minister, in as much as his Government was overthrown before the “ideas which he implemented could bear fruit”.

The TG4 programme juxtaposed Sean Lemass and Éamon de Valera as the “good guy, bad guy” in the economic development of the State. This omits the fact that Lemass had been, like de Valera, long committed to economic protectionism. The programme also made no reference to why the early revolutionaries were conservative in social and economic affairs. Lemass explained this lack of attention to “economic and social aims” by making reference to the wide variety of policies among the early revolutionaries from James Connolly to Arthur Griffith. He said in 1966, “there was a fear that it might breed dissention in the national ranks or divert energies from the national struggle.” The national struggle, of course, remained the primary aim for Éamon de Valera’s entire career.