Seán Lemass regarded Telefís Éireann with suspicion
Taoiseach Seán Lemass looks on as President Éamon de Valera signs the proclamation to dissolve Dáil Éireann in advance of the April 1965 general election. Photograph: Getty ImagesDuring the 1965 general election campaign, a group of 41 members of the Foreign Press Association of London arrived in Ireland as guests of the government.
The electioneering, however, left the foreign correspondents underwhelmed. “The fire has gone out of your elections,” Werner Krug of the Munich Mercur observed, in contrasting the campaign with one he had previously experienced in 1957.
Over time the new television station succeeded in delivering a professional political service but ambitions for more expansive coverage were not realised in time for the 1965 campaign. The political correspondent of this newspaper sought to talk-up the contest. On the eve of polling day, he proclaimed that the campaign had “penetrated in every village and town – and almost every house . . .” This seemed to be a minority assessment. Having followed the leaders to various election rallies, the producers of BBC’s Panorama resorted to filming two university professors discussing the campaign in a pub in Dublin city centre.
The new domestic television service left few fingerprints on the 1965 campaign despite the fact that two in every five homes had a TV set by that time.
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