| THE FOUNDER OF MUINTIR NA TÍRE |
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John M Canon Hayes was born in a Land League hut in Murroe, Co Limerick, on 11 November 1887. Five of John's brothers and sisters died of malnutrition and disease in the hut before he reached seven years of age. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Limerick.
At the age of seventeen he began his studies for the priesthood in St. Patrick's College, Thurles. In 1907 he went to the Irish College in Paris where he was ordained in 1913. From 1915 to 1924 Fr Hayes, priest of Cashel and Emly, served on the temporary mission in Liverpool.
The involvement of his closest friends and his own temperament made it necessary that he should share in some way in the national struggles and tragedies of those years. He could not be thought of as a dispassionate man but it can be claimed that he was without rancour.
Returning to the Ireland of 1924, he brought with him a more than notional awareness of English institutions and people and he benefitted by being absent from scenes of tragedy. Within ten years he was prepared to go into action on a conviction that Ireland needed a generation skilled in the art of social reconstruction.
To explain what must have appeared to be presumption on the part of the curate in Castleiney, he turned to the social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno for inspiration while seeking counsels from responsible friends to assist him in fashioning a community movement which he called Muintir na Tíre, the first unit of which was established in Tipperary town in November 1937.
Since that time the organisation has expanded and today has over 1500 active units spread in every county in Ireland. Fr Hayes was in many ways the pioneer of the "community development" process for local social, economic, environmental and cultural development. He promoted a form of patriotism based on self-help and self-reliance bonded with a philosophy of neighbourliness and community spirit in serving the common good. He challenged people of local communities to put aside their apathy and become involved in local activity aimed at improving the quality of life for all.
In his own words: "if you build a wall, plenty of neighbours will come and watch, with their hands in their pockets, and will tell you it's not much of a wall. But it's better to build a crooked wall than to build no wall at all and let your property go to ruin. There will always be more prudent people to advise you not to start anything new. But more harm is done by doing nothing than by doing something".
Canon Hayes' prime interest was the welfare of communities - rural and urban - and the instrument he employed was co-operation. Convinced that co-operation was practicable even in the twentieth century conditions, he spent his energies demonstrating its benefits, but unlike other leaders of the same word the effect he sought was psychological. He wanted to alter the outlook of the people, to make them realise their potential and power for good if they would only take an interest. Great things could be done, he said, if people worked together in harmony.
Canon Hayes was a superb orator. Whatever its composition, the audience succumbed to his words. He held it with an adroit blend of seriousness and wit and hammered home his message of neighbourliness. Above all he was a sincere man and his eloquence inspired conviction and aroused enthusiasm. He was an outstanding leader and patriot and was intensely concerned about rural development in its broadest context long before successive Irish governments gave serious thought to the subject. He was one of Ireland's greatest optimists and a man before his time.
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