Thomas William Westropp Bennett

Thomas Westropp Bennett (1 January 1867 – 1 February 1962)](see link for photograph) , was an Anglo Irish Catholic politician in the Irish Free State.

Born on his father's estate in Ballymurphy, Co. Limerick he was the son of a British Army Officer and the first Catholic in an old Limerick family of Protestant gentry - an ancestor had sat in Grattan's Irish Parliament in the 1780s. He was educated at St Johns College in Kilkenny and privately but unusually did not attend Trinity College Dublin where many of his forebears had studied.

As a magistrate he was active in local government as a district and county councillor and stood for the Westminster Parliament in January 1912 as an Independent Nationalist. He came within 70 votes of winning the seat in a close fought contest. As Chairman of Limerick County Council he rose to national prominence in a variety of organisations including the Gaelic Language Association

A noted agricultural expert, he was on the board of the Irish Agricultural Organisational Society (IAOS) with the noted reformer Sir Horace Plunkett. He was elected to the Irish Free State Senate in 1922 for Cumann na nGaedhael, he was part of a parliamentary Commission to broker peace in the Irish Civil War.

He was elected as Leas Cathaoirleach to Lord Glenavy in 1925 and as Cathaoirleach (Speaker) of the Senate in 1928, he was vigorous in defending constitutionalism in Irish life during a turbulent time and was engaged in a very high profile contest with the President of the Executive Council Éamon de Valera in 1935 during the campaign to abolish the Senate, in which he was assisted by his brother George C. Bennett, a Fine Gael TD (and later Senator). He also played a significant role internationally, leading trade delegations to Berlin, Prague, Istanbul and London resulting in much economic benefit. Committed to the link between the UK and Ireland as equal members of the Commonwealth, he led an Irish delegation to the Empire Parliamentary Conference in 1935 where he dined with British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, attended receptions with the King George V and the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI) and negotiated with leaders of delegations from South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian Raj and many others as well as attending a Fleet Review and visiting many cities in the UK to promote the Irish Free State. De Valera shunned the British link, so Westropp Bennett's role was very important in promoting Ireland as the sole holder of high office in Ireland to appear at these events

Always active in the Cumann na nGaedhael/Fine Gael parties he was instrumental in chairing talks between Eoin O'Duffy and W. T. Cosgrave in the 1930s which led to the founding of Fine Gael.

He became Chairman of the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society in 1945 remaining at its helm until his death in February 1962 after a lifetime of public service. He was prominent in many areas of Irish life; he was a member of the Council of University College Cork, Vice President of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and President of the Hibernian United Services Club amongst many other roles.

He married twice; his first wife Esther Macdonald-Moreton was a Scottish aristocrat. She was the great granddaughter of the first Earl of Ducie and granddaughter of Sir Angus Macdonald-Moreton a Scottish MP. Her family home was in the baronial Largie Castle Argyll where her father (and later brother) were the local Lairds. They married in 1898 when her dowry was £1200 a year which helped finance his campaigns. She died childless in 1920 and he later married Miss Lila Hapell who had been governess to his niece. Initially he lived in an estate called Ballyteigue in Bruree and then another called Ardvullen in Killmallock before inheriting a small estate called Summerville from a cousin in Co Limerick which the IRA tried to burn down in 1922; he persuaded them to go away, though he himself was unarmed. His son Liam Westropp Bennett stood as a Fine Gael candidate in 1954.

His obituary in the Irish Times said that he was from a "prominent and popular family" in the south of Ireland who had rendered much service during the "turbulent early years" of the Irish State. In an interview in 2008 Liam Cosgrave, the former Taoiseach of Ireland, who knew Westropp Bennett and his brother George, well said that Westropp Bennett "a man of principle....who was held in universally high regard".