The 1950s in Ireland, it can be said without much fear of contradiction, have had a bad press. Tom Garvin’s tour d’horizon of this decade described a society ‘divided over who had responsibility for governing the country, and an underground and rather confused struggle ...between secular and religious authorities, neither being quite sure who was in control, or even who ought to be in control. All this was going on behind closed doors, and the general public merely heard incoherent noises and shouts and were not consulted about issues that did, after all, concern their collective future’