Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I would like to be associated with all the tributes that have been paid to Tomás. While knowing of Tomás MacGiolla over a long period of time, I really got to meet him when we went on a joint visit arranged by Senator Eoghan Harris during Mary Robinson's presidential election campaign in 1990. The visit was to the foundry in Inchicore where my father and grandfather had worked as iron moulders. Having known him from a distance as quite an austere person, I believe he got as much enjoyment as I did from that visit. I believe it was his first time in the foundry and it was certainly Mary Robinson's first time in a foundry. I believe it was a learning experience, involving a left alliance coming together to battle for her successful campaign to become the first woman President of Ireland. In that context, as a woman involved in politics, I have always considered that May and Tomás MacGiolla constituted a team. While one of them was an elected personage, the other person was just as important a member of the team and contributed enormously to the culture of politics that Tomás MacGiolla projected both at local and national level.

Tomás was of course a great internationalist and was very involved during my time in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. When I lived in Africa during the early 1980s, because we were living in Dar es Salaam in the tropics, all the windows in the lecture rooms were open shutters. One day I found a Korean student outside the door, who - believe it or not - admired my English, my accent and my voice. He was a North Korean student of diplomacy who was studying for a higher degree in Dar es Salaam. He asked me to record some material so that the Korean students in Dar es Salaam could practise with the kind of English I was expressing. Given what people in politics often say about my voice, it is a compliment that I always cherish. In any event, after I had done the recording, he came to our house for a cup of tea and a chat. I asked him if he knew anything about Ireland and he said he knew the great Irish revolutionary leader, "Mr. Gilly".

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