Observations on Alfie Byrne taken from Art Ó Briain's 1988 documentary 'All About Alfie.'
First aired RTE 1988; written and directed by Art Ó Briain; Byrne played by Jack Lynch; researcher Valerie Kennedy.
Terence O'Neill: 'Alfie, he was a great man but he wasn't universally popular. There was a great expression in those days that 'Alfie was very good to the poor', but in our house we were always taught that 'the poor were very good to Alfie.''
Des Brannigan: '[Byrne] was a showman politician of the first waters, he knew every trick, every technique by which he could ingratiate himself with people and, unlike certain other politicians, he didn't blush at exploiting problems, exploiting hardship, and ingratiating himself with people by suggesting that he would look after them, et cetera. He never did anything for anybody as simple as that. He was never a member of any political party, he always supported the right wing, but he always maintained independence for the simple reason that he was committed to nothing.'
John de Courcy Ireland: 'I knew Jim Larkin and I met Alfie very casually and I am quite convinced that the two of them represented the two poles of Ireland into which I was born. The people of Ireland had gone through a couple of centuries, three centuries if you like, of being subservient and being largely at the mercy of a powerful minority who controlled their lives, and they got used to looking for charity from these people, and Alfie Byrne represented that kind of attitude. Jim pointed a much harder road, you've got to work out your own destiny along the lines that I think are the right lines but it's your work and you've got to do it. Nobody's going to do it for you. Whereas poor old Alfie delivered his message and his gifts and gave the amusement that he did as a sort of gift from above to the people down below.'
