President Patrick Hillery

With the Irish Presidential election race in full swing, and three candidates already in the field, there are a number of key issues which the electors will put to the would be presidents as they tour the country. Housing, climate and international relations are amongst the top items, as is the question of what each of the candidates might bring to the role. Back in 1976 Patrick Hillery was elected president and would go on to serve two terms, withstanding a number of turbulent incidents, none more so than in 1982 when facing pressure to intervene in matters of government.

Taking office in 1976, an Irish Press editorial noted how Hillery’s expertise should be used going forward and hoped that the role would not just be ceremonial:

DR. PATRICK HILLERY, sworn in yesterday as Ireland's sixth President, takes office at a particularly difficult period in the country's history. We are in the grip of the severest economic recession since the thirties, we are beset by problems with the EEC over farm export taxes and fishery limits, and we are still wracked by the suffering and bloodshed in the North. And yet, despite these crises, yesterday's inauguration gives cause for confidence and for optimism. In Dr. Hillery, the nation has a President particularly well equipped for the duties which he now has to discharge, a man with a national and international reputation. He was the man primarily responsible for negotiating the Treaty of Accession which binds us to the European Communities. And he has spent the first four years of our membership in the role of vice president responsible for Social Policy, our representative in the EEC Commission, not so much as " our man in Europe" as the man able and willing, when the opportunity arose, to express to his colleagues the effects, the fortunes and the misfortunes that any proposed legislation within the Community would bring to Ireland. Yet he was faithful to his oath of office " not to be swayed or persuaded " by nationalism or by the immediate political demands of his Government at home.

Once again, and this must be a strange experience for a man who has spent so many years in domestic politics, he has taken an oath of office that emphasises his role over and above political considerations. This does not mean, and should not mean, that he will stand aloof from those national or international problems where his help and advice can be of service to whatever Government is in power. As he said on his return to Dublin: " I have made so many friends In Brussels, so many more in the European Parliament, that it would be a sin for Ireland if I were to drop them now—we will need them in the future, in Ireland's future."

There could not have been a clearer indication of how Dr. Hillery could help, nor a clearer invitation to the Government to use his expertise and the huge fund of goodwill that he has built up not only for himself in Europe but for the country as a whole. It will be advice that should be particularly valuable in the first six months of next year, when Britain takes over the presidency of the Council of Ministers. It is no longer possible to pretend that Irish, and British economic policies are identical. Recent developments in fishing, in energy and in the vexing question of the taxes that Irish exporters pay on agricultural products, apparently to help subsidise the British consumer, have made this divergence abundantly dear.

The Government can show its respect for the office of the President that the Constitution enjoins on it by turning to Dr. Hillery for his advice on how to tackle these problems. It will be failing in its duty to the nation if it neglects to make full use of such a unique opportunity…

For more information on presidential elections in the past, see the pages of the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchives.com )