Middle-class northside Dubliner Seán T. O’Kelly to succeed Hyde in 1945. Despite having been de Valera’s right-hand man through much of the 1920s and 1930s, O’Kelly was a Knight of Columbanus and was suspected by de Valera of keeping the Catholic hierarchy inappropriately informed about government business: hence, it is argued, his marginalisation (rather than ‘elevation’) to Áras an Uachtaráin.