The first time I voted — Frank Taaffe

IN three days time we go to the polls in a General Election to elect the members to the 34th Dáil. It is an important part of the democratic process and the electors of Kildare South will return four TDs to the Dáil. The first election in which I was able to vote in was the 1961 General Election which was held on Wednesday 4 October 1961.

1961 was an important year for me as that January I had left Athy to work in Naas in Kildare County Council. I stayed in digs in Naas but every weekend I returned to Athy for the comforts of hearth and home in 5 Offaly Street to my mother, Kathleen and my father, John, who was still serving as a Sergeant in the Garda Siochana in Athy. I invariably thumbed a lift from Naas to Athy as it was very much an accepted part of life for young people at the time.

On many occasions I got a lift home from Naas from the late Paddy Dooley who was then a TD for Kildare. He was quiet and gentlemanly, to the point of shyness, who had been first elected to the Dáil for Fianna Fail in 1957. He was the son of Michael Dooley of Duke Street who played a significant role in the republican movement in Athy during the War of Independence and who later had the 1930’s housing scheme Michael Dooley’s Terrace named after him.

Paddy Dooley first became involved in politics with his election to Athy Urban District Council in 1945 and remained on the council up to and including 1974. One of my classmates in the Christian Brothers secondary school was his son, Enda Dooley, and I can recall the superior of the Christian Brothers, Brother J. Brett, at the start of the morning classes extending congratulations to Enda Dooley on his father’s first election to the Dáil in 1957.

I have always been fascinated by the minutiae and workings of elections both nationally and locally and my first experience of being involved in the election process, in a formal sense, was in Kells County Meath in 1967.

It was a year in which my late friend, Frank English was standing for Athy Urban District Council while I had been newly appointed as a town clerk for Kells, Co Meath just four weeks prior to the holding of the local elections.

It was a daunting task for one such as myself, young and inexperienced but perhaps not so daunting as the role which Frank faced in his home town in putting his name before the electorate for the first time. Suffice to say that Frank was successful and went on to serve Athy on the Town Council for 42 years.

It was the same Frank English who approached this uncommitted friend to join the Fianna Fáil party. I did so without having a great ideological draw to the party of the anti-treaty side while my natural allegiance was to Michael Collins and the men who supported the Anglo-Irish treaty. I cannot explain how my best friend exercised such an important influence in my choice of political party!

The General Election of 1961 saw a changing of the guard to some extent. Fianna Fáil was led by Sean Lemass, a veteran of the struggle for independence, who took over from Éamon de Valera who had stepped back from the role as leader in 1959 to become President. Other members of the revolutionary generation departed from the Dáil prior to election including veterans of the 1916 Easter Rising such as Oscar Traynor and Richard Mulcahy.

The county was then a single constituency and returned four successful candidates, Brendan Crinnion and Paddy Dooley for Fianna Fáil, William Norton for Labour and Gerard Sweetman for Fine Gael. There was a later by-election in the county in 1964 occasioned by the death of William Norton who was succeeded by Terence Boylan for Fianna Fail.

As a young man of 19, I wasn’t hugely focused or interested in politics in 1961. I have stronger memories of the opening of the Dreamland Ballroom on the Kilkenny Road, Athy in the summer of 1961 travelling from Naas to the opening night courtesy of Carmel Fitzpatrick’s trusted Ford Prefect accompanied by several girls from the county council offices.

But whatever our concerns, young or old, participation in the democratic process is an important part of life and two of my grandchildren will be voting on Friday in the General Election for the first time, an important milestone for them both as adults and citizens of our nation.