The move by Bob Carr to put the vice-regal officer in a city office has a precedent … from the equally republican-minded Prime Minister of the Irish Free State, Eamon de Valera.
In 1932, De Valera engaged in a concerted attack on the office of Governor-General and the incumbent, James McNeill, whom he saw as an unwarranted and unwanted English entity.
De Valera clashed with Governor-General McNeill over invitations to functions at Government House, culminating in McNeill threatening to make public correspondence about the clash which would have embarrassed De Valera unless De Valera apolgised for his behaviour.
De Valera ordered McNeill not to publish. McNeill did so. De Valera demanded his resignation. The King backed De Valera … the king must follow the advice of his ministers.
De Valera then thought it would be a good idea for McNeill’s functions to be carried out by the Chief Justice, then Hugh Kennedy, until a replacement could be found. But Kennedy did not like the idea because it could compromise the independence of the judiciary. To get out of his problem, Chief Justice Kennedy offered De Valera a better solution … one he got from an eminent Englishman whose name he could not divulge. Biographer Coogan quotes Kennedy: “”I mentioned to him (the emminent Englishman) that one of the great objections in Ireland to the Vice-Regal and Governor-General position was the inevitable re-creating of the old sham Court, gathering around it all the hovering sycophants and certain social types alien to the national life of the country and the rotting the effect of this on social life generally by creating false social values.
“”He said to me, “Why should not the office be conducted as a purely formal office by a man residing in an ordinary residence in the city in such circumstances that nothing of the kind could arise? Then there should be no expectations created either of entertainment or social privilege round the position. He should be an officer with a bureau for transacting the specific task with which he was entrusted, and his office would begin and end there”.””
De Valera seized on the idea. He appointed a colourless party hack, Donal O’Buachalla. O’Buachalla was a retired shopkeeper. After being sworn in he was installed in a modest Dublin house. His salary was cut to a 12th of McNeill’s.
Ireland became a republic in 1949.