Colivet, Michael Patrick

by Pauric J. Dempsey

Colivet, Michael Patrick (1884–1955), revolutionary and civil servant, was born 29 May 1884 at 11 Windmill St., Limerick, son of John Colivet, able seaman of Jersey, Channel Islands, and Ann Colivet (née Kenrick) of Askeaton, Co. Limerick. Educated at St Joseph's seminary, Galway, he was manager of the Shannon Foundry from 1910 to 1922.

Colivet was a member of the IRB, joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914, and was commandant of the Limerick command during the 1916 rising. Imprisoned in Frongoch, he was released in December but rearrested in February 1917 and interned at Fairford, Oxfordshire, from where he escaped in June. Apprehended in October 1917, he was sentenced to six months hard labour for ‘seditious speaking’ and subsequently incarcerated in Lincoln prison. Elected in December 1918 as Sinn Féin MP for Limerick city he was again imprisoned, this time without charge, and kept in solitary confinement in Rathkeale prison, where he suffered from a skin disease and was refused parole to see his dying wife. Elected as Sinn Féin TD for Limerick city and East Limerick (1921–3) and as an alderman on Limerick corporation (1921–6), he was to the fore of the Belfast boycott (1921). He opposed the treaty and was one of twelve members of the second dáil to be nominated by Éamon de Valera (qv) to the anti-treaty council of state; after the arrest of Austin Stack (qv) on 14 April 1923 he acted as minister for finance in the republican government. He was one of five members of the republican cabinet who decided at a meeting with the IRA army council (26 April 1923) on a halt to hostilities. In the ensuing general election (27 August 1923) he stood unsuccessfully for Limerick.

In November 1932 the minister for local government, Seán T. O’Kelly (qv) appointed Colivet, at a salary of £1,000, a year as chairman of a housing board which was instructed to ‘examine housing conditions thoroughly, and to advise and assist the minister in the solution of the present housing shortage’ (Daly, Buffer state, 234). Colivet’s board, which continued in existence until 1944, had a wide-ranging role in the encouragement of local authority housing schemes and meeting attendant problems of finance, skilled labour and raw materials; its relations with the Department of Local Government and its secretary, E. P. McCarron (d. 1970), were frequently strained. In 1939 Colivet was appointed by the minister to chair the Dublin housing inquiry, whose findings provided a comprehensive assessment of Dublin corporation housing output between 1932 and 1939. When the housing board was dissolved, he became general housing inspector in the Department of Local Government (1945–55), a position he held until his death on 4 May 1955.

He married first (1912) Anna Hartigan (d. 1921) of Limerick; they had one son and two daughters. In 1928 he married Una Garvey of Kilrue, Co. Galway. He lived at Castleview Gardens, Limerick; 65 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin; and latterly at 32 Hannaville Park, Terenure, Dublin.