Vol. 317 No. 9
I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1979, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Economic Planning and Development, and for payment of certain grants-in-aid.
I want to pay tribute to the man who was Minister for Economic Planning and Development for two-and-a-half years. The morning after I became a Minister the American Ambassador called to see me because he wanted the matter of flying into Shannon resolved. At that time, Professor O'Donoghue, as he then was, had been on a trip to the US with the former Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch, and they had been discussing the matter. I asked Professor O'Donoghue to give me the benefit of his experience and to advise me on the matter. He was most courteous and helpful to me, a newcomer to politics at that time. Subsequently, he became a Deputy and then a Minister and has been credited with being the author of a document that brought 84 Fianna Fáil Deputies into this House. The Deputies turned on him in ones and twos until he was unnecessarily damaged by the backbiting of his colleagues. As his opposite number, I must say that I found him extremely courteous and helpful at all times. One recognises the right of any Taoiseach to change his Cabinet but I suggest that Deputy O'Donoghue is a great loss to the Government. I hope that he will continue to use his undoubted talents for the benefit of the public.
With the permission of the Chair, I should like to add to what Deputy Barry has said my own personal tribute to the former Minister for Economic Planning and Development. When he was first appointed I was instinctively prepared to find fault with him. I have to say that in the years in which I watched him—I had not the advantage of knowing him personally beforehand as Deputy Barry had—I found him an absolute gentleman. He was polite and patient, particularly patient of the barbs which were flung across the floor at him. I think it a shame that he should be sacrificed to the anxiety to pin on him as being politically expendible the fault which must be carried by the entire Government and by the person who has now been elected their leader.
Deputy Kelly should conclude. We have only a minute to finish the Estimates, by agreement.
I could not let this moment go, agreement or no agreement, without giving Deputy O'Donoghue my personal best wishes and my assurance that I do not feel myself too far away from him today.
