FitzGerald, Garret

FitzGerald, Garret (1926- ), Irish politician, economist, and writer, leader of Fine Gael (1977-1987), and Prime Minister (1981-1982, 1982-1987) of Ireland.

FitzGerald was born on February 9, 1926, in Dublin: both his father and mother fought in the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule; his father, Desmond FitzGerald, became Sinn Fein Minister for Publicity and later Minister for Foreign Affairs (1922-1927) and Minister of Defence (1927-1932) for the Irish Free State; his mother, Mabel McConville, came from a northern Protestant and Unionist family. Educated at Ring College, Waterford, Belvedere College, and University College, Dublin, FitzGerald gained a double first in French and history. After being called to the Irish Bar in 1946, he joined, in 1947, the Irish national airline Aer Lingus, and became responsible for economic planning within the company. His interest and expertise in Irish economics enabled him to establish an economic consultancy in Ireland after he left Aer Lingus in 1958. His consultancy later merged with the Economist Economic Unit of Ireland, of which he became managing director.

From the early 1950s, he maintained a prolific output of journalism, writing for The Irish Times,The Economist, and The Financial Times, and established himself as the country's foremost commentator on economics. He took up a fellowship at the University of Dublin in 1958, and held a lectureship in economics at University College, Dublin.

FitzGerald joined Fine Gael in 1964, and became one of the prime movers on the liberal-radical wing of the party. He became a senator in 1965, and a deputy in the Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, in 1969. As opposition spokesperson on education (1969-1972), and on finance (1972-1973), he quickly established himself as one of the most able deputies in the Dáil. His relations with the conservative leader of Fine Gael, Liam Cosgrave, deteriorated in the late 1960s, and FitzGerald challenged him unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1972. Cosgrave invited FitzGerald to join his coalition government in 1973 as Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which post he established an international reputation.

In 1972 FitzGerald published Towards a New Ireland. This book represented his thinking on the political relationship between the British and Irish states. His central thesis was the need for constitutional reform in the Irish Republic which would create a more pluralist and non-sectarian state, that would therefore be more attractive to Northern Unionists.

After the general election defeat of 1977, Cosgrave resigned as leader of Fine Gael, and FitzGerald succeeded him. FitzGerald immediately initiated a new open style of leadership, and began reorganizing the Fine Gael party. His personal reputation and high public profile, underpinned by a modern election machine for the first time in Fine Gael's history, enabled him to form his first short-lived Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government in 1981. He was returned to power once more in 1982, again as the head of a Fine Gael-Labour coalition government. In 1985 he presided over the setting up of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, establishing a formal consultative role for the Republic's government in certain affairs in Northern Ireland.

The constitutional reforms he delineated in 1972 received a severe setback when a referendum on divorce in 1986 was defeated (a second referendum narrowly passed the right to divorce in 1995). As a pragmatic politician, FitzGerald had the misfortune to preside during a period of small majorities and instability in Irish politics as well as economic depression. His second government did much to restore the stability to Irish national finances by making a series of unpopular cuts in public spending. After losing his majority by one seat in 1987 to a coalition under Charles James Haughey, he stepped down, resigned from the leadership of Fine Gael soon afterwards, and retired from politics in 1993. He held various advisory posts in the public and private sectors after his resignation.

FitzGerald's career represents one of the rare instances in modern Irish political history where an intellectual has crossed into the arena of practical politics and established and maintained an influence.