Michael McDowell (Independent)

A Chathaoirligh, thank you so much for those very kind words in tribute to our good friend, Billy Lawless. I would like to welcome his wife, Anne, his daughter Amy, who has travelled from Chicago, his sisters Helen and Mary, and family friends Carol and Maura. I also acknowledge the presence of Tracy Young, who you have mentioned as well, a Chathaoirligh, because if ever there was a relationship of loyalty and friendship between a member of staff of this House and their employer, it was that relationship between Billy and Tracy. She, like all of us, was very saddened by his death last November.

I know also that Billy Junior, Clodagh and John Paul are listening in to us from Chicago. I just want to say a few words about their father, in particular, the following. When I came here as a Senator for the first time in 2016, Billy had been appointed by Enda Kenny to be a Senator for the diaspora, and on the same day Ian Marshall had been appointed as a representative of the unionist community in this House. Both of them joined with a number of the rest of us to form a Seanad Independent group. We got to know each other obviously over the term of that Seanad. The great thing about Billy was that he was remarkably decent, kind, loyal, forthright and honest in all his dealings, not merely with the members of his own group, but right across the aisle, so to speak, in this House. He was somebody who was kind-hearted and slow to anger, but very clear about what he believed in and very true to what he believed in.

As has been said, Billy emigrated to Chicago in the 1990s, but although he had been a publican in Ireland and in the hospitality business, when he went to Chicago, he grew his workforce from ten to 250 people. No less a person than Barack Obama said "This is what we emigrants do." He built a hugely successful business, the Gage Hospitality Group in Chicago, largely through commitment, the efforts of his family and his personal qualities. When Enda Kenny decided to appoint him as a Senator for the diaspora, he did so on the basis that Ireland needed connections with its allies in the United States, and Billy took that role. Apart from being a leading member of the Irish-American community in Chicago, he took his role as diaspora representative and Member of the Irish Senate very seriously. He travelled to Washington and he knew all the main players on both sides of the aisle. He was hugely committed to developing relations between this country and America, and between members of both Houses of Congress in the United States, with a view to achieving certain aims, one of which was to assist the undocumented Irish who for so many years were living in a shadow. Things have moved on since then, as we grimly know today. Billy was somebody who saw the humanity of their situation. He did his level best to ensure that families were not broken up, that people were not rounded up and put into detention centres and that children were not left without their parents. These were the ideals that drove him in that area.

Regarding the economic relationship between Ireland and America, Billy never stopped seeking to develop contacts and encourage business relationships and mutual investment, both by the Irish in America and by the Americans in Ireland. That was because he knew from his own experience what could be achieved in terms of economic prosperity and the like.

Billy started off - it is not a sin - as a member of the Fine Gael Party.