Austin Currie

Austin Currie
File:Austin Currie 2014 (cropped).jpg
Teachta Dála
In office June 1989 – 17 May 2002
Constituency	Dublin West
Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland
In office 30 May 1964 – 30 March 1972
Preceded by	Joseph Francis Stewart
Succeeded by	Parliament Suspended
Constituency	East Tyrone
Personal details
Born	(1939-10-11) 11 October 1939 Dungannon, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Nationalist Party SDLP Fine Gael
Spouse(s)	Annita Currie
Children	5
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Joseph Austin Currie (born 11 October 1939) is a former politician who was elected to the parliaments of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Currie was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland into a large Catholic family. He was educated in Dungannon and at the Queen's University Belfast. Between 1964 and 1972 he was the Nationalist Party Stormont MP for East Tyrone. On 20 June 1968, with others including mediator Father Tom Savage, he began a protest about discrimination in housing allocation by 'squatting' (illegally occupying) in a house in Caledon. The house had been allocated by Dungannon Rural District Council to a 19-year-old unmarried Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who was the secretary of a local Unionist politician. Emily Beattie was given the house ahead of older married Catholic families with children. Though Ms Beattie had been, unlike the Catholic family, on the waiting list for a property. The protesters were evicted by officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), one of whom was Emily Beattie's brother. The next day the annual conference of the Nationalist Party unanimously approved of the protest action by Austin Currie in Caledon. This was one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

He became an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. In 1970 he was a founder of the group that established the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). From 1973 to 1974 Currie was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. In 1974 he became chief whip of the SDLP. That same year he became Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning in the Northern Ireland Executive.

He contested the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat. He also was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat.

By 1989, Currie had decided to move south, and at the general election of that year he was elected as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála for the Dublin West constituency.

In 1990, after much procrastination, Fine Gael nominated him as a candidate at the presidential election. He came third in the election after Mary Robinson and Brian Lenihan. In the Rainbow Coalition between 1994 and 1997 he became Minister of State at the Departments of Education, Justice and Health. At the 2002 general election he lost his seat in Dáil Éireann when he failed to be elected in Dublin Mid–West. He immediately announced his retirement from politics.

He currently resides in County Kildare, where he trains greyhounds. He occasionally lectures and gives talks on issues relating to the Troubles.

Reading

• Austin Currie, 'All Hell Will Break Loose,' O'Brien Press, Dublin, 2004.

References

Parliament of Northern Ireland
Preceded by Joseph Francis Stewart	Member of Parliament for East Tyrone 1964–1972	Succeeded by Position prorogued 1972 Parliament abolished 1973