Oliver J. Flanagan (22 May 1920 – 26 April 1987) was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served in Dáil Éireann for 43 years and was Minister for Defence for six months.[1] He was elected to the Dáil fourteen times between 1943 and 1982, topping the poll on almost every occasion.[2] He was Father of the Dáil from 1981 until his retirement in 1987, and he remains one of the longest-serving members in the history of the Dáil.

Flanagan was a social conservative, who famously claimed that "there was no sex in Ireland before television".[3] A notorious αnтι-ѕємιтє early in his career, he used his maiden speech in the Dáil, on 9 July 1943, to urge the government to "rout the Jєωs out of this country".[4]

Flanagan was born in Mountmellick, County Laois, on 22 May 1920. He was educated at Mountmellick Boys National School and worked as a carpenter and auctioneer. He was secretly[why?] a Knight of Saint Columbanus, and in 1978 was conferred a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul I.

Flanagan first held political office in 1942 when he was elected as a councillor to Laois County Council, a position he would hold for almost forty-five years.
He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as an Independent Teachta Dála for the Laois–Offaly constituency at the 1943 general election — the third youngest person ever to have been elected to the Dáil until that time. He had stood for election on the Monetary Reform Party ticket, an anti-semitic and Social Credit party confined to his own constituency which proposed reducing the supposed Jєωιѕн stranglehold on the financial system.

During the campaign, Flanagan wrote to Fr Denis Fahey: "Just a line letting you know we are going ahead with the Election campaign in Laoighis-Offaly against the Jєω-Masonic System which is imposed on us. The people are coming to us — but it's hard to get the people to understand how they are held down by the Jєωs and Masons who control their very lives."[6]

He used his maiden speech in the Dáil to urge the government to "rout the Jєωs out of this country":
“   How is it that we do not see any of these [Emergency Powers] Acts directed against the Jєωs, who crucified Our Saviour nineteen hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week? How is it that we do not see them directed against the Masonic Order? How is it that the I.R.A. is considered an illegal organisation while the Masonic Order is not considered an illegal organisation? [...] There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jєωs out of their country. Until we rout the Jєωs out of this country it does not matter a hair's breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jєωs are there is the money.   ”
—Oliver Flanagan, Dáil Éireann, 9 July 1943.[4]
Nonetheless, he was re-elected to the Dáil at the 1944 general election with more than twice as many votes as he had won the previous year.