ABSTRACT
In Fine Gael, the unusual dual leadership structure - Richard Mulcahy was the party leader, but John A. Costello was its nominee for Taoiseach in 1948, 1951 and 1954 - came to an end in October 1959, when Mulcahy resigned his position. As had been widely anticipated, de Valera had relinquished the leadership of his party, and the role of Taoiseach, during its lifetime. The occasion was the presidential election of June 1959, when de Valera was elected to a seven-year term with a comfortable victory over his Fine Gael rival, Sean MacEoin. One of Fianna Fail’s greatest assets in the election was the absence of any credible alternative government. Under its new leader, Fine Gael was keen to stress the virtues of private enterprise at every opportunity, while Labour, which had been even more badly bruised by the 1954–1957 experience, was now set on an anti-coalition course that it was to maintain until 1970.
