Seán MacEntee

Seán MacEntee ( Irish : Seán Mac an tSaoi ) (born August 22, 1889 in Belfast , † January 9, 1984 in Dublin ) was an Irish politician of the Fianna Fáil , deputy prime minister ( Tánaiste ) and long-time minister.

biography

MacEntee began his political career as a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Easter Rising in 1916 and was a member of the IRA until 1921. He was also a member of the National Executive Committee of the Irish Volunteers between 1917 and 1921 .

In 1918 he was first elected to the House of Commons ( Dáil Éireann ) to represent the Sinn Féin , and in 1921 he was among the MPs who voted against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 , which sealed the Irish War of Independence and the creation of the Irish Free State . Although he was undoubtedly a staunch supporter of the Republic despite his revolutionary background , he believed that unification with Northern Ireland could only be achieved by gaining the confidence of the Ulster Unionists .

In 1927 he was one of the founding members of Fianna Fáil, the largest Irish political party .

In March 1932 he was appointed to a government by Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Éamon de Valera as Minister of Finance for the first time and in the following years until 1965 he was a member of all the governments formed by the Fianna Fáil. As part of a government reshuffle, he left the Ministry of Finance in September 1939 and was appointed Minister of Industry and Trade. He was then Minister of Local Administration from August 1941 until the Fianna Fáil was defeated in February 1948.

After his party's electoral victory, he was again a member of the de Valeras government between June 1951 and June 1954 as finance minister. After the three-year government of Fine Gael under Prime Minister John A. Costello , he was appointed Minister of Health by Prime Minister de Valera in March 1957 and held this office until April 1965. He was also Minister for Social Welfare from November 1957 to October 1961 . When Seán Lemass succeeded de Valera as Prime Minister on June 23, 1959, MacEntee took over from Lemass as Deputy Prime Minister ( Tánaiste ).

On April 21, 1965, MacEntee resigned from the cabinet after serving as Minister for 27 years and was replaced as Deputy Prime Minister by long-time Foreign Minister Frank Aiken . He was the last living politician who had still actively participated in the Easter Rising of 1916.

Web links

• Short biography in rulers.org
• Entry on the side of the Oireachtas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irish Ministries