Sean Lemass

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Lemass, Sean (1899–1971), The son of a prosperous Dublin retailer, Lemass was a teenage combatant in the rising of 1916. Interned for IRA activities 1920–1, he fought on the anti‐treaty side in the Civil War. His brother Noel was murdered in October 1923, allegedly by Free State political police. Lemass became abstentionist Sinn Féin TD (Dáil deputy) for South Dublin 1924, and went on to play a key organizational role in the successful establishment of Fianna Fáil.

As minister for industry and commerce 1932–9 Lemass energetically promoted domestic manufacturing through protective tariffs and the exclusion of foreign capital. From 1939 he was minister for supplies (while also resuming control of industry and commerce from 1941), coping efficiently with the acute shortages created by the Second World War. By 1944–5 Lemass was already impatient with the limitations imposed by protectionism and state suport for small‐scale agriculture, but was restrained by the conservatism of cabinet colleagues. In 1959 he succeeded de Valera as party leader and taoiseach, and gave full support to the new strategy of industrial development, largely financed by inward investment, outlined in the First Programme for Economic Expansion.

The rapid modernization of the 1960s, replacing the stagnation of the de Valera era, encouraged perceptions of Lemass's premiership (1959–66) as a new era. Modern accounts emphasize the pragmatism, and at times opportunism, that allowed him to work for so long with a party largely out of sympathy with his goal of economic, and in particular industrial, development, and to respond to the new ideas taking shape in a variety of quarters at the time he became taoiseach. In the same spirit he promoted friendlier relations with Northern Ireland, notably in his exchange of visits with Terence O'Neill (1965), while continuing to insist that economic progress in independent Ireland would eventually permit the peaceful ending of partition.

Lemass, Sean (b. 15 July 1899, d. 11 May 1971). Prime Minister (Taoiseach) of the Irish Republic 1959–66 Born in Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, he joined the Irish Volunteers (militant nationalists) at age 15. He fought in the 1916 Easter Rising, and on the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War (1922–3). He was captured by the Free State forces and imprisoned from December 1922 to December 1923. He was a founding member of Fianna Fáil, and helped build its organization at the grass roots. He entered Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament) in 1925 for Dublin city and remained its member until his retirement in 1969. He became Minister for Industry and Commerce in de Valera's governments (1932–48, 1951–4, 1957–9). He succeeded de Valera as Taoiseach in June 1959. Lemass spent most of his premiership building up industry. He used tariffs, ‘tax holidays’ for foreign companies settling in Ireland, and the establishment of new government-commerce cooperative bodies to promote native industry. The economy improved significantly in the early 1960s, and Lemass laid the plans for Ireland's entry in the European Economic Community (which eventually bore fruit in 1973). His other major accomplishment was his meeting in 1965 with the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, O'Neill, and his instigation of a more pragmatic attitude towards the north. Upon his retirement, he was succeeded by Jack Lynch.