Social and Personal

Social and Personal is one of the longest running columns in The Irish Times. Previously called Court and Personal it originally published the Court Circulars of the British Royal Family, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and brief society reporting details of which members of the upper class were available in their townhouses in Dublin to receive callers.

"Court and Personal"

Following the Partition of Ireland in 1921, the column covered the Governor-General of the Irish Free State and Governor of Northern Ireland, with entries placed, as for the Lord Lieutenant, below entries about the Royal Family. The 1937 Constitution of Ireland established the office of President of Ireland, whose holder should "take precedence over all other persons in the State".[1] The Fianna Fáil government criticised the column for listing President Douglas Hyde's engagements after those of the Royal Family and others, including leading members of the former Protestant Ascendancy — what Frank Aiken called "every hyphenated person in the country".[2] The agreed solution was to place items about the President elsewhere in the paper.[3] In 1942 the government used its wartime censorship powers to remove the column altogether, on the grounds that it compromised the state's neutrality.[4]

"Social and Personal"

Following the declaration of the Republic in 1949 the column ceased to mention British royalty and gradually abandoned mentioning aristocracy. The name was changed to "Social and Personal". Until around 1978 it published a daily list of who met the President of Ireland in Áras an Uachtaráin. The reasons why it stopped doing this remain unclear. The then President, Patrick Hillery suggested that the paper stopped publishing information being supplied to it. The paper insisted that it stopped receiving information from the Áras.

Today the column only makes an occasional appearance, to enable a prominent (rarely titled) family to announce forthcoming nuptials. Whereas once the column received extensive space daily, gets one or two inches of space on the "Letters to the Editor" page if space allows, and contains often only contains one entry and frequently goes for weeks without being published at all.

gollark: ææææ `tar`
gollark: Seriously? How long does it take to extract ONE APIOFILE?
gollark: Oh no, it's one of those.
gollark: I should probably move the big-incompressible-file backups to rsync.
gollark: Anyway, how do I "use" "rsync"?

References

Sources
  • Murphy, Brian (2016). "The Foundations of Presidential Precedence". Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency. Collins Press. pp. 120–159. ISBN 9781848892903.

Citations
  1. "Constitution of Ireland". Irish Statute Book. Article 12.1. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  2. Murphy 2016 pp.147–148; "Estimates for Public Services. - Vote No. 63—Army (Resumed)". Dáil Éireann Debates. 25 April 1944. Vol.93 No.10 p.23 cc1536–6. Retrieved 27 November 2017.
  3. Murphy 2016 pp.148–149
  4. Murphy 2016 pp.149–150
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