September 23 1974
Dublin 0-14 Galway 1-6
“The Jacks are back, ok”. Dublin’s legions of ebullient supporters who turned Hill 16 into a mountain of blue can roar that catchphrase to high heaven once more following their heroes’ 18th All-Ireland championship win at Croke Park yesterday.
And once again the Dubliners proved to be Galway’s bogey team in an All-Ireland which rarely produced the high standard of football expected before 71,898 spectators.
Dublin’s “Heffo’s Army” celebrated their first All-Ireland win with Kevin Heffernan as manager in what would be a successful decade for the Dubs, particularly memorable for the great rivalry with Kerry.
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Articles 2 and 3
We can take it that the Dublin Minister for Justice, Mr [Patrick] Cooney, was giving expression to no more than a pious hope when he asked at a meeting in Cork if the people of the Twenty-Six Counties were “big enough” to make a gesture of reconciliation and to remove the suspicions of northern Protestants by repealing Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution.
Article 2 states that the “national territory consists of the whole of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas”; while Article 3 deals with the jurisdiction of Saorstat Eireann, “pending the reintegration of the national territory”.
Mr Cooney is fully aware, of course – although he did not make this clear in his speech – that however much he or his colleagues would like to see those articles amended or deleted, altogether, from the constitution, this cannot be secured except by the holding of a referendum, which is a possibility only if the climate in the north should change or there were positive indications that co-operation could be secured on an all-Ireland basis.
Equally, as Dr [Garret] FitzGerald pointed out recently, there would need to be consensus among the political parties in Dáil Éireann about the wisdom of holding a referendum. The Minister for Foreign Affairs was quick to point to a worsening situation if a referendum on these two articles secured rejection or any change.
Given present attitudes in the Dáil, Mr Cooney’s suggestion is bound to escape resolution, but it may receive encouragement in some quarters; and it will have advocates as another way of solving the present state of conflict in the north.
