Brugha, Ruairí (1917–2006), politician and businessman, was born 15 October 1917 in Dublin, fourth child and only son (he had five sisters) of the republican revolutionary Cathal Brugha (qv) and his wife Cathleen (Caitlín) (née Kingston), who was later republican and subsequently Sinn Féin TD for Waterford (1923–7) and founded the Dublin menswear business Kingstons Ltd. He was brought up as an Irish-speaker and was educated at Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary, where he excelled in gymnastics; Coláiste Mhuire, Dublin; UCD; and the College of Industrial Relations. Influenced by his family background and a sense of adventure, Brugha joined the IRA in 1933, having been involved in republican activities (such as putting up posters) from the age of thirteen. He had refused to join the IRA youth wing, Fianna Éireann, because he regarded the saffron kilts worn by members as 'silly skirts'. He was put in charge of a training unit recruited from university students. His contact with the IRA grew attenuated after he was sent to England at the age of eighteen for training in preparation for taking over the family business; he spent slightly over a year in London and Manchester. He rapidly grew concerned at the prospect of participating in a renewed civil war and at 'indiscriminate actions and shootings which were not consistent with the aims of the movement. Those in charge seemed unable to cope. All this led me to think critically and therefore independently and prevented me from being too deeply involved' (quoted in Coogan, 286).
At the outbreak of the second world war Brugha was scheduled for detention in the Curragh internment camp, but went on the run. After a year hiding in various locations (he recalled that in some of these hideouts 'he saw, first-hand, how the poor had to struggle to make ends meet' (MacSwiney Brugha, 191)), he was arrested and interned in 1940. On arrival at the Curragh, he was immediately elevated to the camp council (probably because of his family background) and taught beginners' classes in Irish. According to his later account and that of his wife, he had already become disillusioned with the IRA, believing that the southern state was clearly independent. While he always acknowledged that the IRA of his day included 'some of the best elements in the nation they sought nothing for themselves, they only wished to serve their country' (Coogan, 288), he came to believe they were fighting for an illusion, and that their idealism was like a stream diverted into the desert. He acted as a force for moderation within the camp, and late in 1941 was released on parole to his married sister in order to receive medical treatment for a stomach condition. In 1942, while on parole, he met Máire MacSwiney, daughter of Terence MacSwiney (qv); they married on 10 July 1945 and had three sons and a daughter.
Brugha signalled to himself his break with extreme republicanism by voting in the 1943 and 1944 general elections. Although he voted for Fianna Fáil, he refused to sign a pledge not to engage in republican activities as a condition of release because he felt this would be letting down his fellow prisoners. For the same reason, he turned down a proposal that he should join Fianna Fáil, since at the time the Fianna Fáil government was still holding republicans in prison. Instead, he became active in Clann na Poblachta on its foundation in 1946. In the 1948 general election he unsuccessfully contested the Waterford constituency on behalf of Clann na Poblachta, receiving less than 5 per cent of first preferences; he remained a member of the party executive until its dissolution in 1961, and during the first inter-party government (1948–51) tried unsuccessfully to mediate in the growing tensions between Seán MacBride (qv) and Noel Browne (qv).
Succeeding his mother as managing director of Kingstons Ltd, tailors and outfitters, he was an active member of the O'Connell Street Traders' Association and in this capacity served on the board of the An Tóstal festival in the 1950s. He was also active in the Mater hospital pools, a fundraising competition based on football results, and in the Catholic Communications Institute of Ireland. In 1948 he headed a pro-afforestation pressure group, Trees for Ireland, established at the suggestion of Seán MacBride, and remained its driving force until it merged into the Trees Council of Ireland in 2002.
Brugha was an active Irish language revivalist, but unlike many revivalists had a sophisticated sense of the socio-economic preconditions necessary for the language's recovery. Believing that revival would stand or fall in the cities, he made representations to Seán Lemass (qv) about the need to secure better-quality management for Gaeltacht industries. In the early 1960s he tried to mediate in the stormy relations between the Language Freedom Movement (which campaigned for the abolition of compulsory Irish) and his fellow revivalists (many of whom felt that such views should be forcibly excluded from the public arena). As a member of the Radio Éireann (latterly RTÉ) Authority (to which he was appointed in 1965 and from which he resigned in 1969 to contest the general election), he had to address similar disputes about the place of the language in the recently-established Teilifís Eireann. In the 1970s and 1980s he chaired the management committee of Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, an Irish-language school in Glanmire, Co. Cork.
Brugha was a member of An Foras Gnó and of the Irish Council of the European Movement, retaining the latter affiliation into his 80s, and serving as an honorary president of European Movement Ireland. He and his wife were members of the Irish–German Friendship Society and regularly holidayed on the Continent as well as in the Gaeltacht (Máire had spent much of her childhood in Germany and spoke the language fluently).
In the 1960s Brugha was active in promoting North–South understanding through business, cultural and political circles; he retained this commitment until the end of his life and was an active member of the Irish Association. In 1966, when addressing a 1916 commemoration rally in Trafalgar Square, he stated his firm belief that the partition issue could only be resolved by democratic means.
In 1962 he joined Fianna Fáil, though he rapidly expressed disquiet to Seán Lemass about some of the more recently appointed cabinet ministers. He was an unsuccessful dáil candidate in Dublin South in the 1969 general election but was subsequently elected to the seanad later that year on the industrial and commercial panel. In the 1973 general election he was elected TD for the Dublin South constituency and served as front-bench spokesman on posts and telegraphs (1973–4) and on Northern Ireland (1974–7). In this position he voiced support for a bipartisan approach to the Northern crisis (as distinct from those in Fianna Fáil who wished to adopt a more assertively republican line), in particular supporting the Sunningdale agreement of December 1973. His support for the approach adopted by Jack Lynch (qv) and his amiable relations with his opposite number in the Fine Gael–Labour coalition government, Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008), enraged ultra-republicans, including the former Fianna Fáil minister Kevin Boland (qv) (for whom Brugha retained a certain personal respect): 'the epistles of Lynch and Brugha to Westminster and Stormont', Boland commented, 'acquired doctrinal status ranking with the original gospel according to W. T. Cosgrave and Kevin O'Higgins' (Kevin Boland, Up Dev! (1977), 119). During this time Brugha frequently visited Northern Ireland, making many contacts within both communities, despite some painful events such as the refusal of the future Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble to shake hands with him on the grounds that he was 'the son of a murderer' (MacSwiney Brugha, 231). Brugha was a founder member of the British Irish Association in 1974 and remained a staunch member in later life.
Brugha lost his dáil seat in the 1977 general election that returned Fianna Fáil to power, partly because of constituency revisions; Lynch's biographer claims that the loss of Brugha significantly weakened Lynch's position with regard to Northern policy in what was to be his last government. But Brugha was elected to the seanad, on the industrial and commercial panel (as in 1969), and spoke often on European and Northern Ireland issues. At the request of John Hume, the SDLP leader, the Lynch government nominated Brugha to the European parliament in the same year; he failed to retain his seat in the first direct European parliamentary elections in 1979 because of an anti-Fianna Fáil backlash (he won 7.37 per cent of first preferences and was eliminated on the eighth count). He found the factional intrigues within Fianna Fáil regarding the party leader, Charles Haughey (1925–2006), uncongenial and failed to win re-election to the seanad in 1981. His electoral career ended when he unsuccessfully contested the Dublin South constituency in the November 1982 general election. His wife commented that whereas she saw matters in terms of rights and the country's wrongs 'Ruairí was always thoughtful and conciliatory, seeing the others' point of view. He wanted to serve his country. Maybe he was too idealistic for politics as he never promoted himself. His only interest was in putting the country first' (MacSwiney Brugha, 240–41).
Brugha died in hospital in Dublin on 30 January 2006, survived by his wife and children. He had carved out his own political course by thinking for himself, while remaining loyal to what he saw as the best aspects of his family's republican values. In his personal integrity and concern for public service he represented the best aspects of the post-independence national bourgeoisie. After his death a tree was ceremonially planted in his memory in the Phoenix Park by the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.