Noël Browne

Early life and career

Noël Browne was born in Waterford and grew up in Derry, Athlone and Ballinrobe. His mother Mary Therese Cooney was born in 1885 in Hollymount, County Mayo; a plaque has been erected there in her memory. His father worked as an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, partly as a result of this work, all of the Browne family became infected with tuberculosis. Both parents died of the disease during the 1920s, and several of Browne's siblings also succumbed. In 1929 he was admitted free of charge to St. Anthony's, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, England. He then won a scholarship to Beaumont College, the Jesuit public school near Old Windsor, Berkshire, where he befriended Neville Chance, a wealthy boy from Dublin. Neville's father, the eminent surgeon Arthur Chance (son of surgeon, Sir Arthur Chance), subsequently paid Browne's way through medical school at Trinity College, Dublin.

In 1940, while still a student, Browne suffered a serious relapse of tuberculosis. His treatment at a sanatorium in Midhurst, Sussex was paid for by the Chance family. He recovered, passed his medical exams in 1942, and started his career as a medical intern at Dr Steevens' Hospital in Dublin. He subsequently worked in numerous sanatoria throughout Ireland and England, witnessing the ravages of the disease. He soon concluded that politics was the only way in which he could make an attack on the scourge of tuberculosis. Browne joined the new Irish republican party Clann na Poblachta and was elected to Dáil Éireann for the Dublin South-East constituency at the 1948 general election. To the surprise of many, party leader Seán MacBride chose Browne to be one of the party's two ministers in the new government. Browne became one of the few TDs appointed a minister on their first day in Dáil Éireann, when he was appointed Minister for Health.

Minister for Health

A 'White Paper' on proposed healthcare reforms had been prepared by the previous government, and resulted in the 1947 Health Act. In February 1948 Browne became Minister for Health and started the reforms advocated by the Paper and introduced by the Act.

The health reforms coincided with the development of a new vaccine and of new drugs (e.g. BCG and penicillin) that helped to treat a previously untreatable group of medical conditions. Browne introduced mass free screening for tuberculosis sufferers and launched a huge construction program to build new hospitals and sanitoria, financed by the income and accumulated investments from the Health Department-controlled Hospital Sweeps funds. This, along with the introduction of Streptomycin, helped dramatically reduce the incidence of tuberculosis in Ireland.

However, during his term as Minister for Health, Browne would come in conflict with the Catholic Church and the medical profession over the Mother and Child Scheme. This plan, also introduced by the 1947 Health Act, provided for free state-funded healthcare for all mothers and children aged under 16, with no means test, a move which was regarded as radical at the time in Ireland, but not in most of Europe. Virtually all doctors in private practice opposed the scheme, because it would undermine the "fee for service" model on which their income depended. The Church hierarchy, which controlled most hospitals, vigorously opposed the expansion of "socialized medicine" in the Irish republic (though they never objected to its provision via the British National Health Service in Northern Ireland), claimed that the Mother and Child Scheme interfered with parental rights, and feared that the provision of non-religious medical advice to mothers would lead to birth control contrary to Catholic teaching. They greatly disliked Browne, seeing him as a "Trinity Catholic" (one who had defied the Church's ruling that the faithful should not attend Trinity College, which had been founded by Protestants), the more so after he was the only government minister to attend the 1949 Church of Ireland funeral of Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland.

Under pressure from the Church, the coalition government backed away from the Mother and Child Scheme and forced Browne's resignation as Minister for Health. He gave his version of events in his resignation speech to the Dáil on 12 April 1951. In particular, he deplored that the government had referred his Scheme to the Church for approval, taking care to describe it to the Church as his plan and not as government policy, giving him no option but to resign as minister. The Taoiseach, John A. Costello, immediately retorted that "I have seldom listened to a statement in which there were so many—let me say it as charitably as possible—inaccuracies, misstatements and misrepresentations", and delivered his full reply several hours later. Following his departure from government, Browne embarrassed his opponents by arranging for The Irish Times to publish Costello's and MacBride's correspondence with the Catholic hierarchy, which detailed their capitulation to the bishops.

The controversy over the Mother and Child Scheme led to the fall of the coalition government in which Browne had served as Minister. But Church opposition to socialized medicine continued under the subsequent Fianna Fáil-led government. The hierarchy would not accept a no-means-test mother and infant scheme even when FF reduced the age limit from sixteen years to six weeks, and the government again backed down.

Later political career

After his resignation as Minister for Health, Browne left Clann na Poblachta, but was re-elected to the Dáil as an Independent TD from Dublin South-East in the subsequent election.

In 1953 Browne joined Fianna Fáil, but lost his Dáil seat at the 1954 general election and was later expelled from the party. At the 1957 general election he was re-elected for Dublin South-East as an Independent TD. In 1958 he founded the National Progressive Democrats with Jack McQuillan. Browne held on to his seat at the 1961 general election but in 1963 he and McQuillan joined the Labour Party, disbanding the National Progressive Democrats. However, Browne lost his seat at the 1965 general election. He was re-elected as a Labour Party TD at the 1969 general election, again for Dublin South-East. He failed to be nominated by the Labour Party for the 1973 general election, but instead won a seat in Seanad Éireann before being expelled from the Labour Party. He remained in the Seanad until the 1977 general election when he gained a Dáil seat as an Independent TD, at Dublin Artane; he then became involved in the Socialist Labour Party and was briefly its only TD, securing election for Dublin North-Central at the 1981 general election. Browne retired from politics at the February 1982 general election.

Offer of presidential candidacy

In 1990 a number of left-wing representatives within the Labour Party, led by Michael D. Higgins, approached Browne and suggested that he should be the party's candidate in the presidential election due later that year. Though in failing health Browne agreed. However the offer horrified party leader Dick Spring and his close associates for two reasons. Firstly, the leadership had secretly decided to run former senator and barrister Mary Robinson. Secondly, many around Spring were "appalled" at the idea of running Browne, believing he had "little or no respect for the party" and "was likely in any event to self-destruct as a candidate." When Browne was informed by Spring by telephone that the party's Administrative Council had chosen Robinson over him, he hung up on Spring. Browne spent the remaining seven years of his life constantly criticising Robinson—who had gone on to win the election, thus becoming the seventh President of Ireland, and who was considered highly popular during her term. During the campaign he also indicated support for the rival Fine Gael candidate, Austin Currie.

Personality

Few figures in 20th century Ireland were as controversial as Noël Browne. To his supporters he was a dynamic liberal who stood up to conservative and reactionary Catholicism. To his opponents he was an unstable, temperamental and difficult individual who was the author of most of his own misfortune. Browne further alienated the middle ground in 1986 with the publishing of his autobiography Against the Tide. Historians like Dr. Ruth Barrington, who had written extensively about Irish health policy and had access to the files from the 1940s and 1950s, questioned the book's reliability.

Writing a decade later, one of the chief officials of the Labour Party, Fergus Finlay, said Browne had developed into a "bad tempered and curmudgeonly old man". Historian and political scientist Maurice Manning wrote that Browne "had the capacity to inspire fierce loyalty, but many of those who worked with and against him over the years found him difficult, self-centred, unwilling to accept the good faith of his opponents and often profoundly unfair in his intolerance of those who disagreed with him".

However, some of this "difficulty" arose from the fact that Noël Browne was deaf in one ear from an infection. He also suffered numerous attacks of T.B. throughout his career, a fact which he kept private. However, he rarely showed this unpleasant side of himself to the public.

After retiring from Dáil Éireann, Browne moved to Baile na hAbhann, County Galway with his wife Phyllis, where he died on 21 May 1997, aged 81.