Brendan Corish

Encyclopedia : B : BR : BRE : Brendan Corish

Brendan Corish (19th November 1918– 17th February 1990), was an Irish Labour Party politician, and leader of his party from 1960 to 1977. He was Tánaiste (deputy Prime Minister) of Ireland from 1973 to 1977.

Brendan Corish was born in 1918 in Wexford. He was educated locally and was a member of the 1st Wexford Scout troop(Scouting Ireland (CSI)).He joined the clerical staff of Wexford County Councilat a young age. He was elected to the 12th Dáil for the Wexford constituency in a by-election on 4th December 1945 caused by the death of his father, Richard Corish. He was returned to the 13th Dáil in the 1948 general election, and returned at every subsequent general election until his retirement in 1982.

With the election of the First Inter-Party Government in the 1948 election, Corish was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministers for Local Government and Defence, serving until the defeat of the government in the 1951 election. When the Second Inter-party Government was formed after the 1954 election, Corish was appointed Minister for Social Welfare.

In 1960 Corish succeeded William Norton as Labour leader. He introduced new policies which made the party more socialist in outlook. However, the party moved carefully because 'socialism' was still considered a dirty word in 1960s Ireland. Corish claimed that Ireland would be 'Socialist in the Seventies'. To a certain extent he was right because Fine Gael and Labour formed a coalition government between 1973 and 1977. Corish became Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Social Welfare.

In 1977, Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave called a general election, and Fianna Fáil was returned to power in a landslide victory. Corish resigned as leader of the Labour party. He retired from politics completely at the February 1982 general election.

Brendan Corish died on February 17, 1990 in County Wexford at the age of 71.

Political career

This page incorporates information from the [Oireachtas Members Database]

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.