Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Des Hanafin was a colourful, talented and sophisticated man. It was an honour and pleasure for me and many other people to know and encounter him. He had a major influence on Irish politics, particularly, but not exclusively, in the 1980s and 1990s through his support of the pro-life movement and his defence of marriage for its importance to family life and social cohesion. What Des Hanafin promoted and defended in Irish political life may be well known, whereas why he did it is, perhaps, less so. It is now common to decry the connection between faith and politics and to suggest that the inspiration of spiritual convictions is a poor basis to form ideas about policy and law.That analysis does not hold up logically. Everybody, after all, has a faith in something, whether materialism or a higher power that shapes how they view things. There is also the fact, uncomfortable for some, that most of the change makers for good in our history, however, seem to have been motivated by some higher spiritual purpose. One thinks of William Wilberforce whose struggle against slavery drew its motivation and sustenance from his faith in an all-powerful, loving answer to the riddle of the universe. Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King - the list is endless. In his own time and place, Des Hanafin chose a hard road of defending ideas and values that enjoyed widespread support among ordinary people but even then had many opponents in mainstream media and in the emerging new elite of Irish political and cultural life. To his enormous credit, he did not, as other politicians may have done, instrumentalise faith or faith-inspired social policies to boost his own political standing or electability.

Des had already made it as a politician long before. He did so at a very young age indeed. He was born into, and grew up in, a Fianna Fáil family in Tipperary, the sort of household that played host to rebels like Frank Ryan and Peadar O'Donnell and, as others have said, he was educated in Blackrock College. He left early and at 21 years of age was chairman of Tipperary County Council. Starting politics so young he could recall the founders of the State when they were in their prime. Legend has it that he had physically to restrain Dan Breen from finishing off a man who had brought a legal action against them both. When asked about the incident later in life, Hanafin shrugged his shoulders and said maybe he should have let Breen have his way. I do not know whether that story is true, but it is a good one and one that he would have enjoyed telling.

Des had made it and made it early in politics but it was with the transformation of his life through the grace that flowed in the restoration of Mona's health and his own triumph over alcoholism that there came a new set of political priorities. It was that sense of egalitarianism he always had. He said of attending Blackrock College that they were the best years of his life, the only time when everyone was equal and given the same treatment. That sense of egalitarianism blossomed in his championing of the dignity and the rights, for example, of unborn human beings. He and others saw the way the wind was blowing internationally in the courts and legislatures of America and Europe and they saw that what was happening was no basis for a just society. His opposition to divorce could easily be caricatured now as an unthinking defence of a law rooted in the State's strongly Catholic identity of the 1930s, but a law which undoubtedly had its roots in Catholic influence had by the 1980s and 1990s acquired a whole new social coherence of its own. Des Hanafin, William Binchy and others were not appealing to confessional self-interest or to some tribal loyalty but to a broad understanding of the common good and the rights of children in particular. At a time when many of the professional defenders of children's rights went missing or worse, they were concerned about how the change in divorce laws might impact on attitudes to marriage, commitment and the needs of children, and they were not proved wrong.

No politician is bereft of ego. One cannot succeed in politics without a certain self-belief, and the better politicians have a sense of theatre and performance. Des had all of those things in spades, but it took a certain death to self, a certain denial of ego, to embrace values that one knew would be good for society but which would also involve personal suffering, misrepresentation and, at times, vilification, especially when, as in Des's case, he had a taste for the bohemian life and he had very good friends in that world. He had been a pal of The Dubliners and many great musicians, and Senator Warfield may have some of that to recall. The 1965 Feis Ceoil was held in Thurles, largely in the marquees and main buildings of Des's Anner hotel. He had a good voice. I heard it on occasion and he was well fit to stop and chat with buskers because, whether it was a Taoiseach or a busker in the street, Des had the same interest in them. He would often sing along with the buskers and would be known by them. He had personal friendships with Luke Kelly and many others.

Des also became a personal friend of Pope John Paul II. He and Mona were both honoured by Pope John Paul II, himself a giant political figure in many ways when one thinks of his impact on the fall of the Iron Curtain. Des, being a great storyteller, was able to tell of one of the many occasions when he met the late John Paul II when the Pope actually spoke of Tipperary. He said that the Pope said that soldiers going to war used to sing a song and he repeated what he heard with a bar of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". I do not think any other politician in Irish history would have an anecdote like that but that was Des Hanafin. He would have known Mother Teresa as well and he would have enjoyed the respect of those people for his principled and courageous approach to politics on issues in which he really and truly believed. He was willing to pay the political price for his values. We know that he lost his seat by a very narrow margin but later recovered it. He would have appreciated how in his song "My Way", Frank Sinatra sang that he "took the blows", but in keeping with another Frank Sinatra song, "That's Life" he would have appreciated how "You're riding high in April, Shot down in May" but are "back on top in June". That was Des's political and business story.

As a sane and sober man, with old world values and charm, Des could make people's day. He made the day of a friend of mine when I brought her to hear him speak at a meeting. He complimented her on her fine brown eyes, and it was entirely appropriate and gallant. It was a million miles away from the seedy selfishness of a thousand political and entertainment celebrities about whom we are learning with horror these days. Des knew his accomplishments. He was not above rolling down the window of a car and asking a taxi driver how he had done on television the previous night or it might have been how his Mary had done on the previous night because he was deeply proud of his family and of the achievements of Mary and John. Talent, as they proved, did not skip a generation, as it is sometimes alleged to have done with others around here, but for his wife Mona, who was honoured as he was by the Pope, it cannot always have been easy for her to have this larger than life figure in her life. Her greatness and impact on Des's life and the lives of many other people is well known. We sympathise with Mona, Mary and John and all the family on their loss but we also thank them for his great service to the common good. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.