Brian Lenihan Sr.

Brian Joseph Lenihan ( Irish : Brian Ó Luineacháin ; born November 17, 1930 in Dundalk , County Louth , † November 1, 1995 in Dublin ) was an Irish politician of the Fianna Fáil , Deputy Prime Minister ( Tánaiste ) and several ministers.

biography

Lenihan began his political career in 1957 when he was elected a member of the Senate ( Seanad Éireann ). In the 1961 election he was elected member of the House of Commons ( Teachta Dála ) ( Dáil Éireann ), of which he was a member until his death. Lenihan quickly gained a good reputation within the Fianna Fáil because of his sociable nature, but also because of his good relations with the later Prime Minister Charles Haughey .

In 1964 he was appointed Minister of Justice by Prime Minister Seán Lemass as Haughey's successor , making him the first member of a government. In his office as Minister of Justice, which he held until 1968, he was responsible for easing the strict censorship laws . In 1968, Prime Minister Jack Lynch first appointed him Minister of Education before he was Minister of Transport and Energy between 1969 and 1973. From January 3 until the end of the Lynch government on March 14, 1973 after the defeat in the general election in February 1973, he was foreign minister for the first time.

After the re-electoral victory of Fianna Fáil in the 1977 elections, Prime Minister Lynch first appointed him Minister of Fisheries. When his old friend Charles Haughey became Prime Minister himself on December 11, 1979, he was again appointed Foreign Minister on December 12, 1979. As such, he remained in office until the end of Haughey's first term on June 30, 1981. In Haughey's short-term cabinet he was later Minister of Agriculture from March 9 to December 14, 1982.

After Fianna Fáil won the general election in 1987, he was appointed Foreign Minister for the third time in Haughey's third cabinet on March 10, 1987, and was also Deputy Prime Minister ( Tánaiste ). As Secretary of State he had merit in attempts to improve relations with Northern Ireland during a troubled period. He particularly advocated a settlement of the dispute between the south and north of Ireland during the hunger strike of Republican prisoners in a British prison in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. On July 12, 1989, he took over the post of Secretary of Defense as part of a government reshuffle , while Gerard Collins took over the State Department.

In September 1990 he was officially nominated by his party Fianna Fáil as a candidate for the Irish presidential election on November 7th. Lenihan was seen as the clear favorite over the other two candidates, Austin Currie from Fine Gael and Mary Robinson from the Irish Labor Party . But during the election campaign his credibility was badly shaken. When it turned out that he had been untruthful about a conversation in 1982 with then-President Patrick Hillery . As a result, he lost his cabinet post on October 31, and a week later the presidential election against Mary Robinson.

Despite his defeat, he remained a member of parliament and dealt mainly with foreign and domestic policy issues and was instrumental in bringing about the coalition government of Fianna Fáil and the Irish Labor Party in 1992. After his death, his son Brian Lenihan junior was re- elected to parliament.

source

• Entry on the Oireachtas homepage
• Short biography on rulers.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Irish Key Ministries
2. ↑ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Irish_presidential_election%2C_1990.html Information on the 1990 presidential election. Accessed February 3, 2018