George C. Bennett

George C. Westropp Bennett (1877 – 20 June 1963) was an Anglo-Irish Catholic Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael politician. He was born in Ballymurphy, his father's estate in County Limerick in 1877. He was the second son of Captain Thomas Westropp Bennett, a British Army officer and a scion of an old Limerick family of Protestant Irish Gentry. His elder brother Thomas Westropp Bennett had a very successful career as a Senator and Cathaoirleach of the Irish Free State Senate as well as serving in the Board of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) for many years with Sir Horace Plunkett.

George C. Bennett spent several years farming in Canada before returning to Limerick. He became a Magistrate, County Councillor and Vice Chairman of the local Hospital Committee and was involved in many other charitable projects which brought him a considerable local following. A noted farmer, agricultural expert he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Cumann na nGaedheal Teachta Dála (TD) at the June 1927 general election for the Limerick constituency.^[1] He later joined Fine Gael.

Throughout his time in the Dáil he was renowned as a strong defender of the Agricultural interest and was very popular with his constituents. After a redrawing of the boundaries of the Limerick constituency he was not re-elected in the 1948 general election but the Inter Party Government Taoiseach John A. Costello nominated him to the Seanad where he sat until 1951 in recognition of his service to Ireland.^[2] A noted agricultural and financial expert, he inherited an estate called Rathaney from an uncle George Bennett and owing to his financial independence gave all of his parliamentary salary to funding his constituents. A noted member of Fine Gael, he died in June 1963 after a political lifetime spent in the service of the people of Limerick and the wider Irish State. He never married, though had a wide and catholic circle of friends throughout Ireland and the UK. He was rated as "an excellent shot" and was an enthusiastic huntsman and breeder of pedigree dogs; the famous Milltown Irish Red Setters are a legacy of his.

His obituary in The Irish Times in 1963 said that he had been "a popular public representative". In an interview in 2008 Liam Cosgrave, the former Taoiseach of Ireland, who knew George Bennett well, said that "in 60 years he never heard a bad word said against Bennett who was held in universally high regard".

References

Sources

• Based on facts from the Irish Free State Parliamentary Companion 1932.