Tom O'Higgins

Irish public servant with a double life in law and politics

Thomas Francis O'Higgins, jurist and politician: born Cork 23 July 1916; called to the Irish Bar 1938; Judge of the High Court 1973; Chief Justice of Ireland 1974-84; Judge, European Court of Justice 1984-91; married 1948 Therese Keane (five sons, two daughters); died Dublin 25 February 2003.

The jurist and politician Tom O'Higgins was born shortly after the Easter Rising which led to the foundation of the Irish Free State. His political career was sustained in Fine Gael, which claimed descent from the cabinet of 1921. During his last months, the party he served has reached its lowest ebb. His long life in public service can be read as an index of personal integrity and political disappointment.

Thomas Francis O'Higgins was born in Cork, the hometown of his mother, Agnes (née McCarthy). His father was a doctor attached to the barracks at Portobello in Dublin. The family was conventionally Catholic, and its army affiliation was not exceptional in professional, middle-class circles. Beside the barracks stood St Mary's College, run by the Holy Ghost fathers. By the time Tom entered its gates, the barracks had changed hands and an Irish tricolour flew from the mast. He completed his secondary education at Clongowes Wood, the Jesuit Alma Mater of James Joyce.

From boarding school in Kildare, O'Higgins returned home to enrol as a student at University College, Dublin, where he took a first class degree in legal and political science. In his professional examinations at the King's Inns he took first place, and was called to the bar in 1938.

The O'Higgins family had sacrificed much for Irish independence. A grandfather had been killed during the Civil War, and his uncle, Kevin O'Higgins (a "strong-man" minister) was murdered in 1927. Behind the turbulence of the 1920s lay a tradition of middle-class constitutionalism reasserted in Tom O'Higgins's career as politician and lawyer. The elections of 1948 swept three members of the family into Dail Eireann, and returned Fine Gael to power after 16 years: Tom O'Higgins took a seat in Laois-Offaly.

In the 1950s, the pace of Irish political life allowed even diligent deputies to pursue their non- political careers: Fine Gael was distinguished by the number of practising barristers on its benches. In 1954, O'Higgins was promoted Senior Counsel and appointed Minister for Health in a second coalition government. Health was a sensitive portfolio and O'Higgins sought to rescue some of the progressive elements of previous attempts at legislation. In 1957, he augmented his efforts to develop a national health service by introducing the Voluntary Health Insurance scheme.

With Eamon De Valera's electoral success in 1957, O'Higgins returned to opposition, dividing his time between the law courts and back-room attempts to reshape his party. De Valera's decision to stand for the presidency in 1959 marked a relaxation of the civil-war animosities which had characterised parliamentary politics for nearly 40 years. Reformers in Fine Gael advanced a "Just Society" manifesto to which O'Higgins contributed. No electoral advantage accrued, though in 1965 he was appointed frontbench spokesman on finance.

The following year, De Valera's term of office as head of state ended, and in the ensuing election O'Higgins came tantalisingly close to defeating the Chief. Wrong-footed by the wily Jack Lynch in 1973, O'Higgins committed himself to a second presidential bid, when elections returned his party to power. In the presidential contest, he lost to Erskine Childers. Despite his energy and willingness to modernise, O'Higgins was to remain politically unfulfilled.

The remainder of his public life was dominated by legal appointments, to the High Court in 1973, then to the Supreme Court the following year, and in 1984 to the European Court of Appeal, where he served until 1991.

After his retirement, Tom O'Higgins and his wife spent part of each year in Mayo where he fished and completed a volume of memoirs, A Double Life (1996).

W. J. Mc Cormack