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Joe McGrath

1887–1966

 

The founder of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes was one of the most remarkable Irish businessmen of his generation, a man who never said no to a challenge.

      Joseph McGrath was born in Dublin, and showed his talent by joining a firm of accountants, Messers Craig Gardner.  He also joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and fought at Marrowbone Lane during the Easter week rebellion.  He was arrested and jailed in Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton.  In the general election of 1919 he was returned on the Sinn Féin ticket for the St James division of Dublin.  In early 1920 he and Robert Barton were among the prominent members of Sinn Féin arrested by the authorities, but by August 1921 he and Barton were acting as messengers between EAMON DE VALERA [2] and Lloyd George, after the truce between the two sides, and again to Gairloch in September with Harry Boland.  He supported the treaty, and in January 1922 was named Minister for Labour in the provisional government of the Irish Free State.  During the civil war he was a member of what might be called the War Cabinet.  In September his title was changed to Minister of Labour, Industry, Commerce, and Economic Affairs.  In the first election of the Irish Free State he was elected from north-west Dublin.  In the Free State government of 1922 he was Minister of Labour from January to August 1922, and then of Industry and Commerce from August 1922 to April 1924, in the interim being elected deputy from North Mayo.

      Early in 1924, at the time of the army mutiny (when some conservative officers protested at government reductions in the army), he supported the officers, and later that year he and eight others of the national group resigned from the Dáil, protesting at what he described in the group's paper the Nation as 'government by a clique and by officialdom of the old regime'.  He resigned his Dáil seat in October 1924, and left politics.

      One of the first great enterprises of the Free State government was the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme at Arnacrusha.  In 1925, McGrath became labour adviser to Siemens-Schuckert, the German electrical firm contracted to build the giant installation.

      This was only part of his business interests.  In 1930 he and two others, Richard Duggan and Spencer Freeman, launched the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes, after the Free State government had legalized charity sweepstakes.  The Irish hospital system was in danger of collapsing through lack of funds.  The first race on which they ran a sweep was the November Handicap of 1930.  They sold an unbelievable £658,000 of tickets, about £22 million in today's funds.  The hospitals got £132,000, or one-fourth of the total expenditure of all the hospitals in the Irish Free State.  The promoters got £46,000.  And so it went, earning McGrath and his friends millions.

      Though illegal in many places, including the United States and Britain, the tickets were still sold.  In the United States, Joe McGrath was able to use the old IRA to outlet the tickets.  His contacts left Clann na Gael and went into business, their 'physical skills' as revolutionaries deterring the Mafia from moving in on the act.

      Though it was suspended during the war, the sweepstakes resumed in 1947 and went on till recently, when the need for it was no longer apparent.  Its overall value to the Irish economy was astonishing.  Tony Farmar notes: 'For the Sweep as a whole, the net income to Ireland in 1932, after deducting the overseas prizes, was £3.5 million - more than the government's receipts from income tax'.

      Its huge success, with tickets being sold worldwide, made Joe McGrath and his family exceptionally wealthy.  This provided him with the capital to enter into other areas of business, such as the long established Dublin Glass Bottle Company.  In 1950 he became involved with efforts in Waterford to revive the glassmaking industry.  This was the real beginning of Waterford Crystal, a firm which he built up over the next fifteen years into one of the most famous brand names in the world, worth another fortune in exports to the Irish economy.

      In his leisure time he was an avid racing fan, and became a well-known owner and breeder of racehorses.  In time his horses won all the classic Irish races, and Arctic Spruce won the Epson Derby in England in 1952.

      McGrath was a member of the Irish Racing Board from 1945 until his death, its chairman from 1956 to 1962, and president of the Bloodstock Breeding Association of Ireland in 1953.  He died at his Cabinteely home, outside Dublin, in March 1966.

      In a land starved for capital, Joe McGrath was perhaps its first real capitalist, a figure rare in Ireland at any time in the past.  He touched Irish life at so many points that it must have been hard for many to get a clear view of his achievements.  But the creator of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes and Waterford Crystal belongs in a special gallery of achievement.