Career
After finishing his education, Childers worked for a period in a tourism board in Paris. In 1931, Éamon de Valera invited him to work for de Valera's recently founded newspaper, Irish Press, where Childers became Advertising Manager. He became a naturalised Irish citizen in 1938. That same year, he was first elected as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for Athlone-Longford. He would remain in the Dáil Éireann until 1973, when he resigned to become President.
Childers joined the cabinet in 1951 as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the de Valera government. He then served as Minister for Lands in de Valera's 1957-59 cabinet; as Minister for Transport and Power under Seán Lemass; and, successively, as Transport Minister, Posts and Telegraphs Minister, and Health Minister under Jack Lynch. He became Tánaiste in 1969.
Erskine's period as a minister was controversial. One commentator described his ministerial career as "spectacularly unsuccessful." Others praised his willingness to take tough decisions. He was outspoken in his opposition to Charles Haughey in the aftermath of the Arms Crisis, when Haughey and another minister, both having been sacked, were sent for trial amid allegations of a plot to import arms for the Provisional IRA. (Haughey and the other minister, Neil Blaney, were both acquitted.)
Read more about this topic: Erskine Hamilton Childers
Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
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“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)