Jump to content

1974 Irish presidential election

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1974 Irish presidential election

← 1973 18 December 1974
(Unopposed)
1976 →
 
Nominee Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh
Party Fianna Fáil

President before election

Erskine H. Childers
Fianna Fáil

Elected President

Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh
Independent

The 1974 Irish presidential election resulted from the sudden death in office of President Erskine H. Childers. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was elected unopposed as the fifth president of Ireland.

Nomination process

[edit]

Childers died on 17 November 1974. On 21 November, the Minister for Local Government issued a ministerial order setting 3 December as the date for close of nominations and 18 December as the date of the election.[1]

Under Article 12 of the Constitution of Ireland, a candidate for president could be nominated by:

Agreed candidate

[edit]

Initially all parties privately agreed to nominate the late president's widow, Rita Childers.[2] Before she was informed of the plan, however, a mix-up led to the collapse of the arrangement.[3] A partially deaf Fine Gael Teachta Dála, identified in some reports as Tom O'Donnell,[4] confirmed the secret arrangement upon mishearing a journalist's question asking about the decision of a local council's nomination of Childers as president, having assumed that the cross-party decision was made public.[3] Fianna Fáil leader Jack Lynch, thinking the party was set up, subsequently withdrew from the agreement and nominated Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh instead.[3] The parties agreed to the new arrangement due to a number of external factors, including a sluggish economy and The Troubles.[3]

Ó Dálaigh had served as Attorney General from 1951 to 1953, as a judge of the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1973, as Chief Justice from 1961 to 1973, and had been serving as a judge of the European Court of Justice from 1973 at the time of his nomination. All parties agreed to Ó Dálaigh's nomination. As no other candidate was nominated, it was not necessary to proceed to a ballot for his election.

Result

[edit]
1974 Irish presidential election[5]
Candidate Nominated by
Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Party

Ó Dálaigh was inaugurated as president on Thursday, 19 December 1974.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "December 18th poll if Presidency contested". The Irish Times. 22 November 1974.
  2. ^ Regan, Mary (10 May 2010). "Rita Childers dies peacefully aged 95". Irish Examiner. Archived from the original on 4 July 2018. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  3. ^ a b c d "The best President we never had". Irish Independent. 15 May 2010. Archived from the original on 4 July 2018. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  4. ^ "Presidential campaigns are not getting dirtier - they are just more public". The Tuam Herald. 26 October 2011. Archived from the original on 1 September 2018. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  5. ^ "Presidential Elections 1938–2011" (PDF). Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. p. 30. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 December 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2018.