Oliver J. Flanagan

Who was Oliver J. Flanagan?

Oliver J. Flanagan was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served in Dáil Éireann for 43 years and was Minister for Defence for six months. Prior to his election to the Dáil, Flanagan had been Secretary of a local branch of the Fianna Fáil party. He was elected to the Dáil fourteen times between 1943 and 1982, topping the poll on almost every occasion. He was Father of the Dáil from 1981 until his retirement in 1987, and he remains one of the longest-serving members in the history of the Dáil.

Flanagan was a social conservative, who famously claimed that "there was no sex in Ireland before television". A notorious anti-semite early in his career, he used his maiden speech in the Dáil, on 9 July 1943, to urge the government to "rout the Jews out of this country".

Nonetheless, he was consistently popular in his own constituency, largely because of the attention he paid to individual voters' petitions and concerns. He has been described as "one of the cutest of cute hoors in the history of the Dáil".