Dan Spring

Spring was born into a working-class family in Tralee, County Kerry. He left school at the age of 14 and began his working life with a series of low-skilled jobs. When he was working at a mill, he became involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) and after a while became a trade union official. He married Anna Laide (1919–1997) in 1943.[2]

Spring was a Gaelic football player, and was the captain of the Tralee Kerins O'Rahilly's team with whom he won two Kerry Senior Football Championship titles in 1933 and 1939. He first played with Kerry when he won Munster and All-Ireland Junior titles in 1930.[3] He later joined the senior team where he won All-Ireland titles in 1939 and captain of the side when they won the All-Ireland final in 1940.

Through his involvement with the ITGWU he became well known enough to stand in Kerry North for the Labour Party at the 1943 general election. He was elected as the first Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for Kerry and held his seat until he retired in 1981.[4]

In 1944, Spring was among a group of six TDs who broke away from the Labour Party because it was allegedly infiltrated by communists and formed a new party they called the National Labour Party. The Labour Party and the National Labour Party reunited in 1950, having worked alongside each other in the First Inter-Party Government since 1948.

In 1956, during the term of the Second Inter-Party Government Spring was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government, which he held until the government ended in 1957.

For the rest of his political career Spring never held any significant post on a national level, and as a relatively conservative rural Labour man he fell out of step with the official line of the Labour Party, which moved significantly to the left during the 1960s and 1970s. During a vote on contraception, Spring famously said that on the day of the vote, his constituents would see how he stood on the issue. On the day of the vote, he appeared as a barrister in a court far away from the parliament. Spring concentrated on his constituency work and was returned in every election he stood in until he retired in 1981, his son Dick then successfully contesting the seat.

• Families in the Oireachtas