Joe Jacob (born 1 April 1939) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician.
Joe Jacob was born in Kilrush, County Clare in 1939. He was educated at De La Salle in Wicklow and Terenure College in Dublin. He is a former publican and a distribution manager with N.E.T.
Jacob was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the constituency of Wicklow at the 1987 general election. He held his seat at each subsequent election, until retiring at the 2007 general election.
Jacob was a member of Wicklow County Council from 1985 to 1997 for the Wicklow area. He was appointed a Minister of State at the Department of Public Enterprise with special responsibility for Energy in 1997, a post he held until 2002. He was not re-appointed to a ministerial position after the 2002 general election. He was Chairman of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party from 1992 until 1995 and served as Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the Dáil from 1993 until 1997.
Jacob caused controversy in 2001 when, during a radio interview on The Marian Finucane Show as the Minister responsible, he demonstrated an apparent lack of knowledge over the use of iodine tablets and the emergency plans in the event of a terrorist attack similar to September 11 attack in the United States.
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or jacob:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)