Desmond Joseph O'Malley (2 February 1939 – 21 July 2021) was an Irish politician who served as Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1977 to 1981 and 1989 to 1992, Leader of the Progressive Democrats from 1985 to 1993, Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism from March 1982 to October 1982, Minister for Justice from 1970 to 1973 and Government Chief Whip and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence from 1969 to 1970. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Limerick East constituency from 1968 to 2002.
A prominent Fianna Fáil member and government minister in the 1970s and 1980s, O'Malley was expelled from the party in 1985. He founded the Progressive Democrats and served as the party's first leader from 1985 until 1993. He retired from politics at the 2002 general election.
Early life
O'Malley was born in Limerick in 1939. His family had long been involved in politics: His maternal grandfather, Denis O'Donovan, was killed during the War of Independence by the Black and Tans, two of his uncles and his father held the office of Mayor of Limerick, and his uncle Donogh O'Malley was a Minister for Education.
O'Malley was educated at the Jesuit Crescent College and at University College Dublin, from which he graduated with a degree in law in 1962.
He was married to Pat McAleer, who predeceased him in 2017. They had six children, 4 daughters and two sons, including Fiona O'Malley.
Entering politics
In 1968, his uncle and sitting TD Donogh O'Malley died suddenly. Initially, Donogh's widow Hilda was asked by Fianna Fáil to stand in the coming by-election to try and retain the seat for the party. However, as Hilda was still in shock because of her husband's sudden death she declined and instead, after a canvass of many O'Malleys, Desmond O'Malley was selected and he stood in the subsequent by-election to fill the vacant seat. Desmond was successful and was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Limerick East constituency. At the time it was believed that this by-election victory by just 900 votes was partly due to Neil Blaney and his "Donegal Mafia". Blaney would subsequently deeply regret aiding O'Malley in his election as he always felt that Des was in the wrong party. The relationship between Desmond and Hilda was strained following Desmond's victory after Hilda had a change of heart about entering politics. She requested that Desmond stand aside in the 1969 general election in favour of her becoming the main Fianna Fáil candidate, but Desmond refused.
Arms Crisis and Minister for Justice
After the 1969 general election, O'Malley was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, Jim Gibbons. O'Malley had a central role in the case for the prosecution against the government ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney that arose from the Arms Crisis of 1970. Both ministers were acquitted in a trial at the Central Criminal Court.
It has been alleged by numerous scholars that O'Malley was aware of alleged efforts by Taoiseach Jack Lynch's efforts to procure arms for northern Nationalists, to be kept under lock and key at a secure location at a monastery in County Cavan, and the training of young men, hand-picked by the Citizens' Defence Committees to be instructed in their use by the Irish Defence Forces. This is subject to much controversy and there is no agreement for this.
It has been further alleged that O'Malley was aware of a ministerial memo that stated:
A transport of army trucks with 500 rifles, 80,000 rounds of ammunition and respirators was indeed sent to the North but did not cross the border, in April 1970 (following orders Defence Minister Gibbons issued in February of that year), instead the trucks were parked at Aitken barracks in Dundalk. Owing to a lack of sufficient space, all but 150 rifles were returned south immediately, and the remainder in May 1970, ostensibly due to a fear the barracks could be raided by the IRA. As O'Malley was a junior minister in the Dept. of Defence, it is highly unlikely that he was not aware of the relevant handwritten memo suggesting their removal from Aitken Barracks. This memo, as with the one above, was not admitted as evidence at the Arms Trial, perhaps because it might have aroused suspicion as to the Irish Department of Defence's intentions in moving so many weapons and for what purpose. It has been suggested that the arms were to be temporarily stored there whilst Captain James Kelly procured the intended weapons from Germany, under instruction from the Defence Minister, Jim Gibbons and the Army Director of Intelligence, Colonel Michael Hefferon.
In 1970, O'Malley succeeded Mícheál Ó Móráin as Minister for Justice. At age 31, O'Malley was the youngest Minister for Justice since Kevin O'Higgins who had presided over the tumultuous post-revolutionary period in Ireland in the 1920s following the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.
O’Malley knew that there was an informer because he mentions this fact in his memoirs – where he reveals that the Garda received a "tip-off" from an informer about the arms importation attempt that sparked the Arms Crisis of 1970. The informer was Seán Mac Stíofáin, who did so to discredit the Jack Lynch government and prevent the development of a potential rival military organisation - the Citizens' Defence Committees. Mac Stíofáin had sourced superior weapons independently from the United States and wished to eliminate the possibility of these weapons falling into the hands of his arch rival, Cathal Goulding, the leader of the Marxist rump faction, the Official IRA, whom the media alleged the weapons were destined for. Curiously, in Taoiseach Jack Lynch's account to Dáil Éireann mentioned no informer, stating instead that the arms were discovered quite by accident by Dublin Airport Staff.
As Minister for Justice, O'Malley reinforced the Offences Against the State Act so that a person could be convicted of IRA membership on the word of a Garda Superintendent. He also introduced the Special Criminal Court, a juryless court presided over by three judges which tries cases of terrorism and serious organised crime, with the cited raison d'être being to avoid witness intimidation.
In early 1985, the Fine Gael–Labour Party government introduced the Health (Family Planning) (Amendment) Bill 1985 to liberalise the sale of contraceptives. Fianna Fáil opposed the bill, but O'Malley considered it a matter of conscience and wanted to support it. O'Malley's speech was later praised as one of the best ever delivered in the Dáil. stated during the extensive debates:
When the bill came to a vote, he abstained. However, that did not save him from Haughey's fury. On 26 February 1985, he was summoned to a party meeting and charged with "conduct unbecoming". Following a roll-call vote, he was expelled from Fianna Fáil by 73 votes to 9.
Progressive Democrats
Immediately afterwards, Desmond O'Malley was contacted by a young Fine Gael activist, Michael McDowell, who encouraged O'Malley to found a new political party and offered any help he could give. On 21 December 1985, O'Malley announced the formation of the Progressive Democrats. He was joined by Mary Harney (like O'Malley, an independent TD expelled from Fianna Fáil), and later by Fianna Fáil TDs Bobby Molloy and Pearse Wyse and Fine Gael TD Michael Keating. At the 1987 general election, the Progressive Democrats won 14 seats, making the new party the third-biggest in the Dáil. Among the TDs elected for the new party were O'Malley and his cousin Patrick O'Malley; Anne Colley, daughter of George Colley; Martin Gibbons, son of Jim Gibbons; Michael McDowell and Martin Cullen. Fianna Fáil returned to power with Haughey as head of a minority government.
Coalition with Fianna Fáil
In May 1989, Haughey called an early general election in the hope of winning an overall majority, but Fianna Fáil actually lost seats. The Progressive Democrats also lost seats, but held the balance of power. Haughey failed to be elected Taoiseach, as the Progressive Democrats voted for Fine Gael's leader Alan Dukes, but after Haughey formally resigned as Taoiseach he entered into negotiations with the Progressive Democrats to form a coalition. On 5 July 1989, Haughey and O'Malley agreed a deal for government, and O'Malley was appointed Minister for Industry and Commerce.
In 1990, Fianna Fáil's nominee in the presidential election was Brian Lenihan. A few weeks before the election a scandal broke over the accusation that Lenihan had phoned the President, Patrick Hillery in 1982, asking him not to dissolve the Dáil following the fall of Garret FitzGerald's government. Lenihan had always denied this, but now new evidence had come to light. O'Malley told Haughey that the Progressive Democrats would pull out of the coalition and support a no-confidence motion tabled by the opposition unless Lenihan left the government or Haughey opened an investigation into the incident. Haughey sacked Lenihan.
In early 1992, the programme for government was up for renewal. When it was revealed by Seán Doherty that Haughey had authorised the tapping of two journalists' telephones in 1982, O'Malley decided that the Progressive Democrats could no longer remain in his government. Haughey resigned on 11 February 1992 and was replaced as party leader and Taoiseach by Albert Reynolds. O'Malley and the Progressive Democrats continued in the coalition until Reynolds accused O'Malley of being "dishonest" while giving evidence to the Beef Tribunal. The collapse of the coalition that November led to the 1992 general election. Fianna Fáil returned to government in a coalition with the Labour Party and the Progressive Democrats moved into opposition.
Retirement and later life
In October 1993, O'Malley retired as leader of the Progressive Democrats. He was succeeded by Mary Harney, one of the co-founders of the party. In 1994, O'Malley ran for the European Parliament but was defeated by Pat Cox, a sitting MEP who left the Progressive Democrats to run as an independent when O'Malley was selected as the candidate to replace him. O'Malley remained as a TD until his retirement from politics at the 2002 general election, when he was succeeded as TD by his cousin Tim O'Malley. His daughter Fiona O'Malley was elected to the Dáil as a Progressive Democrats TD. His son Eoin O'Malley is a political scientist in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University.
In October 2014 he released a memoir, Conduct Unbecoming: A Memoir. The book received mixed reviews. The Irish Examiner described it as "pungent and to the point" while historian Diarmuid Ferriter, writing for the Irish Times, dismissed it as "an infuriatingly bad and poorly-written book", noting that "all sorts of assertions are made without evidence or elaboration and this approach is maintained throughout the book, underlining the lack of coherence or focus". Ferriter also took issue with a number of claims made by O'Malley particularly regarding the Arms Crisis.
O'Malley died on 21 July 2021 at the age of 82, having been in poor health for some time.
Electoral results
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan=7|Elections to the Dáil
|-
! colspan=2|Party
! colspan=2|Election
!
!
! Result
|-
| rowspan="7" style="background:;" |
| rowspan="7" | Fianna Fáil
| Limerick East
| 1968 by-election
| 16,638
| 43.7
| Elected on count 3/3
|-
| Limerick East
| 1969
| 5,960
| 16.6
| Elected on count 7/7
|-
| Limerick East
| 1973
| 7,806
| 21.0
| Elected on count 1/6
|-
| Limerick East
| 1977
| 8,762
| 19.5
| Elected on count 6/10
|-
| Limerick East
| 1981
| 9,346
| 19.2
| Elected on count 1/9
|-
| Limerick East
| February 1982
| 9,049
| 19.1
| Elected on count 1/10
|-
| Limerick East
| November 1982
| 10,615
| 22.5
| Elected on count 1/9
|-
| rowspan="4" style="background:;" |
| rowspan="4" | Progressive Democrats
| Limerick East
| | 1987
| 12,358
| 24.9
| Elected on count 1/13
|-
| Limerick East
| | 1989
| 8,385
| 18.1
| Elected on count 1/8
|-
| Limerick East
| | 1992
| 8,304
| 17.2
| Elected on count 1/12
|-
| Limerick East
| | 1997
| 4,358
| 8.8
| Elected on count 9/11
|-
|}
See also
- Families in the Oireachtas
References
External links
- Desmond O'Malley file at Limerick city library, Ireland