The poet Paul Durcan is a bit of a solipsist, if not the Compleat Tosser.
His “Making Love Outside Aras An Uachtarain” imagines
Dev patrolling the Park like an old-time bush-beating Cleric spoiling the
most native of sports, but carrying a rifle instead of a blackthorn stick.
De Valera was a life-long mathematician and believer in both scientific study
and the practical application of scientific knowledge. He set up the Dublin
Institute of advanced Studies and among his achievements was getting the
Nobel Prize winning (for Physics 1933), Vienna-Born Erwin Schroedinger to join
its Staff. In 1942 Schroedinger gave a series of talks, attended by Dev and
other prominent citizens, lay and Clerical. Dev had ensured that Scroedinger
got Visas both for his wife and his mistress, both of whom bore the professor
children during his time in Ireland. Dev had no prurient interest in the
private lives of geniuses and Durcan’s gigantic conceit would have been
better concealed in the dark.
To read, for instance Fintan O’Toole you would never think that de Valera had
an interest in Economics, or that early in the 1930s he attended, with some of
his Cabinet a talk by Maynard Keynes
in Dublin, where Keynes supported Dev’s imposition on import duties to
stimulate Irish self-sufficiency. Dev did not preside over a Cabinet of Cretins
unable to argue against his policies, nor
did Dev employ Party Civil Servants afraid to offer impartial advice.
Industrial employment and housebuilding in the first decade of Fianna Fail rule
expanded greatly. Dev was an enthusiastic promoter of aviation and risked life
and limb of himself, his son Terry,
Frank Aiken and others, on a plane watching mid-air fuelling over Foynes.The
pilots involved were all British, which should give the lie to the cretinous
claims of, amongst others Max Hastings
that Dev was motivated by hatred of English people.
I could cite many instances where Dev has been misrepresented by malign, lazy,
or stupid commentators.
I could also condemn him for a few serious instances. But, considering the
length of his service to Ireland and the world community, vey few.
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