Eoghan Harris (Independent)

Unlike most people here, I would consider myself to have known Séamus Brennan as a political understudy. He came to me — this tells you much about his consummate grasp of politics — just after the 1977 general election. He picked me out in RTE and asked if I would like to do a programme on how they won the 1977 election. He was approaching someone he knew was a Workers' Party supporter, somebody who was incredibly hostile to his party as it stood and, indeed, with grandiose ambitions to put it out of business if we could. He picked me because he knew I shared his passion for politics as an art form. There are two kinds of politician — butchers and artists. There are some people who just want to get into politics to be there and to draw their salaries and there others who want to get into politics to do something and to do it elegantly. He was the most elegant political operator. He had an elegant mind. He had a likeness. Breandán Ó hEithir and I used to watch him in The Goatstown Inn and call him "an buachaill caoldubh". He sat there, the dark slender boy, and inside that slight frame was this amazing political brain.

He picked me because he knew I would love what he was going to show me and that I would be seduced by it, which is true. He laid out the internal structure of the 13 directors of elections who had targeted the 13 marginal constituencies and he gave me full access to the background. He knew I was taking a technical and professional interest in it, and I put many of the lessons to work later. What I was struck by was the band of brothers, the clarity, passion and belief of all those who worked with him, not just that he was a decent man, an elegant man and a man of vision, but that they had the same kind of vision. They were a very attractive bunch of people and they had his passion for a politics of public service.

I will not labour the point but, at a time when we are talking about reform of the public sector, Séamus Brennan gave value for money. He worked hard as a public servant, but not just in that pedestrian way. I was very struck by what someone said about Lemass, that he worked as a public servant in the great Whitaker tradition where it was not enough just to put down a day's work but one had to bring something extra, something visionary, something passionate and something patriotic to it. No doubt Séamus had that Lemass-Whitaker touch and he was a very underestimated man. He left an indelible mark on Irish life in that he modernised Irish politics.

I did not meet anybody in Fianna Fáil in these years — except Jack Lynch — who impressed me the way Brennan impressed me. He was a modern mind and a modern person. He had the great last gift of a great politician and a great artist, he had great manners, and one needs that too in politics.

My sympathy to his wife, family and that great bunch of political colleagues around him. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal.