‘Fianna Fáil has lost its soul’ – Retired Judge Seán Mac Bride

In his first interview since leaving Fianna Fáil, retired Donegal Judge Seán MacBride described the party as having “lost its soul and its raison d'être” over a number of years.

He also touched on the “disastrous” General Election 2020 campaign in Donegal, during which one of the Fianna Fáil candidates, Charlie McConalogue, dispensed with a long-standing Director of Elections, to run his own campaign.

In addition, Mr MacBride explained his subsequent decision to join Sinn Féin, and how he was looking forward to “getting down to work on the party’s ‘All Ireland New Republic Project’ at the end of August.”

Relishing a return to serving in public life, the proud Moville man said his resignation had come about as a result of his “painful but slow realisation” Fianna Fáil was “no longer a Republican party.”

He was also “disgusted” by Micheál Martin’s pre and post-election denigration of Sinn Fein. Mr MacBride revealed Micheál Martin’s close advisors had told An Taoiseach “such attacks would garner votes for Fianna Fáil in Donegal.”

Seán MacBride added: “I voted against the Confidence and Supply arrangement with the Fine Gael Government in 2016. I did not agree with it and that was the first shock for me, and I started to become disillusioned.

“The worst was yet to come. When things got really bad in Housing and in Health, I thought Micheál Martin should have pulled the plug and he had every right to do so because he had been sold out. I thought the party would have overthrown him, but it didn’t, because too many of the Fianna Fáil TDs had not enough backbone and weren’t principled enough.

“Because of this, my heart was not in the 2020 General Election campaign. Firstly because the previous election was directed by a long-standing, very experienced Director of Elections, a fine man. The biggest mistake, which was made by Charlie McConalogue, and I told him he was wrong. He told us he was directing his own campaign.

“I thought it was the stupidest, most irrational political decision that any politician could make, and the omens were not good. It was an unceremonious thing to do and a very disrespectful thing to do. That was a big mistake. I also felt at the doors, people were very hurt over Health and Housing and Fianna Fáil has lost it and were going to get a hiding,” said Mr MacBride.

At a Fianna Fáil breakfast meeting, Seán MacBride was less than impressed with the “south County Dublin view of economics” espoused by a college friend of the candidate.

Seán MacBride recalled: “At that meeting, in February 2020, we should be seeking one percent bonds over one hundred years and we should use that for building up the infrastructure in the country and also, in particular, access to education.

“We should employ more teachers, reduce the pupil – teacher ratio, that we should have railroad to Donegal. I felt as a committed social democrat and Republican, we must be left of centre. All I can say is that the South County Dublin gentleman was totally discourteous to me. He was extremely arrogant towards me. I realised then, if this view was influencing the candidate, the party was on the road to nowhere and the road to self-destruction.”

Seán MacBride joined Fianna Fáil in 1969, shortly after finishing his A-Levels and acted as a Personating Agent at the polling booths, when Liam Cunningham and Neil Blaney were elected to the Dáil and Fianna Fáil third votes helped to get Paddy Harte (Fine Gael) elected also. It was, he said, the last Civil War election in Donegal.

Mr Mac Bride, an accomplished historian, added: “I felt Fianna Fáil had lost its touch and feel for the poorer people. Initially, when the party was founded, it was based on the working class and the Republicans who had fought in the Civil War and the old IRA Companies in the Tan War. It was very much a people-based movement. Definitely left of centre.

“The first Fianna Fáil Government under Éamon de Valera was very radical. Seán T O’Kelly, for instance was the Minister for Housing and the Minister for Health combined, subsequently President of Ireland, and he completely solved the housing problem in Dublin at the time by building the public housing estates out in Crumlin and in other areas of the city.

“He was a Dubliner himself and came from a working class background and was a wonderful man. He was a powerful diplomat. He went to the Paris Peace Talks at the end of WWI, along with Count Plunkett, as one of three envoys of Sinn Féin. Also, Seán Lemass was very radical in setting up semi-state bodies in the 1930s. As Minister for Industry and Commerce, he set up the sugar company and forestry and, subsequently, Bord na Móna was established.

“De Valera was quite like Mandela in that there was a reclaiming of land and the allocation of small farms to people. For instance County Meath was owned by absentee landlords and De Valera more or less bought them out under the Land Purchase Annuity Acts and under the Land Commission,” said Mr Mac Bride.

Citing the Fianna Fáil Government of Seán Lemass (1961 to 1965) as “the best Government this country ever had, bar none”, Seán Mac Bride listed the Civil Liabilities Act and the Succession Act as among its many accomplishments.

He added: “We then had the great Donogh O’Malley who introduced free education in 1966, which was the greatest thing of all time. That was a wonderful Government.”