Noel Browne

Noël Christopher Browne ( Irish : Nollaig Críostóir de Brún ; * December 20, 1915 in Waterford , County Waterford ; † May 23, 1997 in Baile na hAbhann , County Galway ) was an Irish politician who was an MP for several parties ( Teachta Dála ) sat in the House of Commons ( Dáil Éireann ) and was Minister of Health for several years.

biography

After attending school, he studied medicine and graduated with a medical doctor . He then worked as a general practitioner .

His national political career began with Dr. Browne as a candidate for the Clann na Poblachta party, which was dissolved in 1969 and for which he was first elected member of the Lower House in 1948 and represented the constituency of Dublin South-East .

Shortly after his election, on February 2, 1948, he was appointed to the coalition government headed by the parliamentary leader of Fine Gael John A. Costello as Prime Minister ( Taoiseach ) and was minister of health in this. On April 11, 1951, he had to resign because of the so-called "Mother and Child Scheme" scandal and thus contributed not insignificantly to the defeat of the coalition parties in the elections on May 30, 1951 .

After he had left the Clann na Poblachta, he was re-elected as a non-party member in the constituency of Dublin South-East in 1951 and joined the Fianna Fáil for a short time in 1953 . In 1954, however, he suffered an election defeat and was only re-elected to the Dáil as an independent in 1957. In 1958 he was one of the co-founders of the National Progressive Democrats and was elected for this in the 1961 general election in turn as a member of the constituency of Dublin South-East . After the National Progressive Democrats were dissolved again, he entered unsuccessfully in 1965 as a non-party.

In 1969 he was elected as a candidate for the Irish Labor Party again as a member of the lower house, where he again represented the constituency of Dublin South-East until 1973 . In 1973 he decided not to run again for the Dáil and instead became a member of the Senate ( Seanad Éireann ) for the Socialist Labor Party (Ireland), which he co-founded in 1977, as a representative of the University of Dublin . In 1977 he ran again for the House of Commons and was re-elected as a member of parliament, initially representing the constituency of Dublin (Artane) and then as a representative of the Socialist Labor Party from 1981 to 1982 the constituency of Dublin North Central .

In 1982 he renounced another candidacy and left the Dáil Éireann.

In 1990 he was proposed by some politicians as a candidate for the Irish Labor Party for the 1990 presidential election . The then party chairman Dick Spring , however, considered him the unsuitable candidate for a variety of reasons and instead preferred the professor and long-time Senator Mary Robinson and was able to push through this personnel proposal within the party. Out of disappointment over the non-nomination, Browne became a major critic of Robinson’s elected president in the following years until his death .

Web links

• Homepage of the Oireachtas
• Irish Ministeries (rulers.org)