Kevin McNamara (bishop)

[1] In office, McNamara and the neighbouring Bishop of Limerick, Jeremiah Newman, became the most outspoken conservative voices in the Irish hierarchy.

In 1984, the archdiocese of Dublin became vacant when its archbishop, Dermot Ryan, was given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia.

(Ryan was expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but died suddenly in office before a consistory could be held.)

While the coalition succeeded in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce were defeated.

Already suffering from what proved to be terminal cancer, Archbishop McNamara died in April 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government had been defeated in the 1987 general election.