The President and the Captain’s Wife – Punchestown 1940
How a Punchestown invite prompted a stand-off between a civil servant and the Kildare Hunt elite (by Liam Kenny)
The Punchestown festival has many dimensions – sporting, social and commercial – but few would imagine that it has had an impact at the very highest levels of government. An invitation to Ireland’s first President, Dr Douglas Hyde, to attend the Punchestown festival of 1940 prompted a clash between Áras an Uachtaráin and the Kildare Hunt management – a collision of cultures monitored by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. One might think that de Valera had enough on his desk in the Spring of 1940 with the flames of war escalating on the European continent. By April of that year the German army was rampaging across the continent. On the Irish coast marine lookouts scanned the horizon for an invasion fleet – either German or, from the old enemy, British. And yet, some of the Taoiseach’s precious time was occupied with a dispute over the protocol details of an invite to the President to attend Punchestown. An eighty-year old file preserved deep in the National Archives in Dublin reveals the detail of this remarkable contretemps.
The saga began innocently enough when the secretary to the President, Michael McDunphy, a war of independence veteran turned career civil servant, spotted an invitation card for Dr Hyde to attend the April meeting. As presidential gate-keeper it was McDunphy’s job to check the preparations for the President’s reception at any function to which he was invited. His first reaction to the invitation from Punchestown was to telephone the home of its sender – Capt. Gerald Dunne, manager of the course on on behalf of the Kildare Hunt, to establish the detailed arrangements for the President’s visit. The phone was answered by Capt. Dunne’s wife Mabel – a lady of landed-English extraction – who proceeded to tell McDunphy that she had authority speak on her husband’s behalf on all matters affecting Punchestown. When McDunphy asked for details of who would be sitting with the President at lunch in the steward’s box, Mrs Dunne told him that there was no need to question the good taste of the Punchestown selection committee (which McDunphy wryly noted was effectively herself). There was another sticking point when McDunphy said Dr Hyde might want to be accompanied by friends such as his son and daughter-in-law to which Mrs Dunne replied that the names would have to be submitted in advance by the President’s office. McDunphy baulked at this demand saying that there was no way in which the President of Ireland would submit names for approval by any inviting party. Attempting to reinforce her stance Mrs Dunne added that Punchestown could not be expected to bear the costs of extra guests accompanying the President. McDunphy was as quick with his response by retorting that he could save Punchestown any expense by recommending to the President that he not attend at all.
There was further disagreement over McDunphy’s declaration that the President would be accompanied into Punchestown by an Army escort of honour. Mrs Dunne said there was no question of this happening offering the specious reasoning that the course had been altered in some way that would make an escort impossible.
The call finished with McDunphy noting his dissatisfaction in the office file. Not only did he find Mrs Dunne “truculent and difficult” in attitude but more fundamentally he formed the impression that she and those on whose behalf she was speaking – namely, the Punchestown committee– were not willing to facilitate a proper welcome for the President as Head of State of Ireland. For context, it has to be appreciated that the Irish Constitution which De Valera worded so as to remove the trappings of British rule from Irish life had been endorsed by the public in a referendum just three years previously. Key to this Constitution for an independent Ireland was the office of President elected by popular vote and replacing any vestige of the royal regime which had ruled Ireland for centuries prior to independence. It was McDunphy’s impression that Mrs Dunne and those she spoke for in the Punchestown circle were unwilling to entertain this change from royalty to republic and wanted Dr Hyde present as a private guest rather than as a Head of State of an independent Ireland.
Matters improved but only slightly when a week later Capt. Dunne and his wife called to the Áras at McDunphy’s invitation to try to find agreement on the protocol for the President’s visit to the Kildare festival. The frosty relationship between McDunphy and Mrs Dunne clearly persisted on the part of the latter – she remained outside the Áras in the car while her husband headed into the presidential offices. Capt. Dunne reiterated the same objections that his wife had enunciated regarding McDunphy’s insistence on the President being accompanied by guests and by an escort. But a more fundamental item of state symbolism entered the discussion – Capt. Dunne’s refusal to the requirement that the National Flag be flown over Punchestown during the President’s visit. McDunphy insisted that the flying of the tricolour was a mandatory protocol at any event that the head of state would be attending. Capt. Dunne – a retired officer of an elite British army regiment – said that flying the flag would introduce politics to the occasion. McDunphy countered that flying the State’s flag as defined in the Constitution recently approved by the people had no political connotations being a mark of respect for the country’s head of state. Capt. Dunne left the Áras with, no doubt, McDunphy’s declaration ringing in this ear that the President would not set foot in Punchestown if the National Flag was not displayed in the President’s presence. It was indicative of the resistance among the Kildare Hunt squirearchy to accepting that the country had moved on from being a subject of the Empire to becoming a republic that Dunne contacted McDunphy some days later to say that after consultation with the Punchestown committee he had to convey the message that the National Flag would not be hoisted. McDunphy did not let the matter drop and put it up to Dunne that he would be willing to meet with the Punchestown Race Committee or the Turf Club to impress on them that the new State could not accept any dilution of the honours rendered to the President. After more days of terse negotiations Capt. Dunne with his wife in attendance conceded on all the points raised and the previous reluctance to fly the tricolour melted away. Being the diligent civil servant that he was McDunphy sent a full report on his interactions with the Punchestown management to Taoiseach de Valera who was clearly satisfied that the country’s premier national hunt festival had accepted the message that it was now part of a new Ireland and replied through his secretary that “no further action was required.”
The above article appeared in The Leinster Leader of 22nd April 2025. Our thanks to Liam Kenny for forwarding on the text.
