Garret FitzGerald RIP

[The Worker]

R.I.P

Doesn't matter what people think of him in death....Let the guy Rest in Peace..

well said pat...RIP

[Ulick]

Garret the Good?
Jude Collins


Nil nisi bonum de mortuis dicere -  speak only good of the dead – is a difficult command to follow. In fact impossible. There are clearly people who are dead – try Hitler, Stalin, some of my old teachers – who test that injunction to destruction.  But they're dead quite some time now and that seems to make a difference.

Garret Fitzgerald is dead less than twenty-four hours and the commentators have been following the Nil nisi  injunction to the letter. Praise of all kinds from all quarters is being heaped on him. One politician – I think it was Seamus Mallon – said he was one of the great political figures of the twentieth century. I suppose it's no more over-the-top  than to go "Wow!" when an Englishwoman says three Irish words.

He's indissolubly linked with the Anglo-Irish Agreement which hugely annoyed the unionist population here, and for some that was enough to make the Agreement a  good think and Fitzgerald a hero. Others like myself saw the Agreement as a British-Irish effort to block the electoral rise of Sinn Féin. In that attempt it and he were successful certainly temporarily. Did the Anglo-Irish Agreement pave the way to the Good Friday Agreement? Probably not.  The Hume-Adams talks and the IRA ceasefires did that.

Was Garret a great politician? I  don't think so.  He failed as often as he succeeded in electoral terms. His efforts to make the south of Ireland a more secular society had partial success, although Gay Byrne could probably claim as much credit on that score.  Garret's claim – or the claim of others for him – that he understood the north particularly well, having a republican father and a northern Presbyterian mother, is shaky. There are lots of people whose parentage is similar and who haven't a clue about northern politics.

He was regarded, former Fine Gael Taoiseach Alan Dukes said last night, with feelings of  "amused affection" by his peers and the public. That got it just about right, I think. When I studied at UCD in the mid-1960s, Garret was a lecturer there.  He was the epitome of the absent-minded professor, only on speed. He thought at lightning pace, moved at lightning pace, talked at lightning pace. A lot of students didn't know what the hell he was talking about most of the time but they still enjoyed him and were amused by him.

It'd be easy to remember his strenuous efforts to block the electoral path of Sinn Féin while at the same time calling on republicanism to embrace electoral politics. It'd be even easier to remember his very Dublin-4 dismissal of Charlie Haughey as a man 'of flawed pedigree'. But I prefer to remember him before all that, lecturing in economics in UCD,  circa 1965.  He delivered his lectures in a tumbling, word-running-into-word non-stop torrent, which occasionally even he would feel uneasy about.  On one occasion he had been hammering on full-speed for some ten minutes, scarcely drawing  breath, and everyone in the lecture hall was scribbling flat-out in a hopeless attempt to keep up with him. Eventually Garret paused, looked over his glasses and asked in his naive way: "I'm not going too fast, am I?"  A voice from the fifth row, belonging to one Seamus McCotter from Swatragh Co Derry (one of Charlie Haughey's many northern cousins, as it happens) responded in an audible whisper: "You're goin' like a f**king 'puter!" [= computer].  Garret seemed genuinely baffled when the lecture theatre exploded in a yell of laughter.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam  - May he rest in peace.

[ross matt]

The man deserves a great send off RIP Garret

I hope this dose not sound petty but I hope there is no state funeral, it is not the time or place to flitter away money on such things. It was a disgrace Haughey ever got one.

If we can flitter away the money on security for Lizzie and Obama visits this week the least we can do is spend (alot less) on a state funeral for a former Taoiseach. I agree though that Haughey should never have recieved one.

[Kerry Mike]

I met him once at Vienna airport way back in 2002 I think, waiting for a flight to Dublin, shared a coffee and a chat and he was a very sociable kind of fellow chaated away about sport and the like, When it came to boarding he waved away the attempt by the Aer Lingus trolley dolly at the desk to give him boarding preference and he boarded just like the rest of the common people back in the arse of the plane, no airs or graces. I always respected him in politics, he seemed that much more honourable than the likes of some of the crooks we have had as Taoiseach. And yes he deserves a state funeral.

RIP Garrett Fitzgerald.

[Hardy]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

[glens abu]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

I would give him the same respect he gave the Hunger strikers.

[Mentalman]

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

I would give him the same respect he gave the Hunger strikers.

There was more than enough food for them to eat, they committed suicide.

[dillinger]

RI.P.. A good man who i'm sure had the thoughts of all Irish people in his works. Wonder what price you can get for a double, along with Thatcher this year? 

[Gaffer]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

I would give him the same respect he gave the Hunger strikers.

What is it about Provo supporters who think everyone should have given them everything they wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted it.

[IolarCoisCuain]

The man deserves a great send off RIP Garret

I hope this dose not sound petty but I hope there is no state funeral, it is not the time or place to flitter away money on such things. It was a disgrace Haughey ever got one.

Son, if Eamon DeValera could give Eoin O'Duffy a state funeral in 1944 when the country was a damn sight more broke than it is now we can bury Garret right this weekend. He deserves that for his role in public life.

As to his legacy, I'd agree with Ulick and Ross Matt. He was a good man but he was not a good Taoiseach. On the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Derek Davis has a very powerful letter about them in today's Irish Times. People ought to read it.

On the 1981 election, it's a little discussed thing but Haughey's original plan was to announce the election at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in February. And then the Stardust fire happened on Valentine's Day and the Ard Fheis was postponed a mark of respect.

Then, when the election did happen, the hunger strikers had started dying and that cost Haughey seats. People forget what those times were like. Even now, as a adult looking back on my child's work, the country was in much worse shape then than it is now, any way you slice it.

God rest poor Garret. Whatever failings he had, I don't think even his harshest critics could call him a cynic. That makes him unusual in any country's public life.

[NetNitrate]

Credit has to be given to Garret for taking the steps to move Ireland out of the dark ages. I remember the divorce referendum in the 80s and how the local clergy had painted all the roads in our town in big bold letters: Vote No. The paint was there for years afterwards. Ireland was a narrow minded place back then. The Church wielded huge influence. That referendum was lost. But Garret, while being a religious man himself, was the first leader of the country to take on the church. And remember the uproar when condoms were finally legalised. Yes, that was the Ireland we had back then.

RIP Garret Fitzgerald.

[glens abu]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

I would give him the same respect he gave the Hunger strikers.

There was more than enough food for them to eat, they committed suicide.

Take me home to Mayo

[glens abu]

RIP Garret. The fact that the SF cabal here can't find it in themselves to exhibit a little generosity of spirit even on the occasion of his wake, in defiance of the best Irish tradition, says a lot about them and indeed about him.

I would give him the same respect he gave the Hunger strikers.

What is it about Provo supporters who think everyone should have given them everything they wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted it.

All I said was I would give him the same respect he gave to the hunger strikers,whats your problem with that.Did you not think he gave the hunger strikers and their families respect?

[whiskeysteve]

Eventually Garret paused, looked over his glasses and asked in his naive way: "I'm not going too fast, am I?"  A voice from the fifth row, belonging to one Seamus McCotter from Swatragh Co Derry (one of Charlie Haughey's many northern cousins, as it happens) responded in an audible whisper: "You're goin' like a f**king 'puter!" [= computer].  Garret seemed genuinely baffled when the lecture theatre exploded in a yell of laughter.

Lol. Up the Swa