It was with sadness that I learned of the death of the former Senator and Deputy John F. Conlan last week. John Francis Conlan was born in Ballybay in May 1928. Both his father, Peter, and his uncle, also called John Francis, played no small part in the struggle for independence. Both were interned in Ballykinlar Camp in County Down for a period, being released at the time of the truce in July 1921. The Conlan family suffered a great deal at that time as the late Deputy's uncle, John Francis, was killed tragically in a shoot-out on the Main Street in Ballybay during the Civil War.
John F. Conlan's political roots went back even further than the War of Independence. His family roots were steeped in the political tradition of John Redmond, John Dillon and the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was long associated with the Ancient Order of Hibernians and with the tradition of Dillon.
Having completed his education at St. Macartan's College in Monaghan, John F. Conlan went into the family business in Ballybay. In 1950, aged 22, he was elected to Ballybay Town Commissioners and thus began a life of public service which spanned the next 49 years. He was elected to Monaghan County Council in June 1955 and served there until his retirement in June 1999. He was twice Cathaoirleach of the County Council, in 1974-75 and 1997-98, and served as Chairman of Ballybay Town Commissioners for more than 20 years. He was also a member of County Monaghan VEC and the North Eastern Health Board as well as the Border Regional Authority.
In 1965 John F. Conlan was elected to Seanad Éireann on the industrial and commercial panel. He was also election agent and Monaghan representative of the late Deputy James Dillon, who represented the constituency of Monaghan at that time. In 1969, along with the late Deputy Billy Fox, he was elected to Dáil Éireann for Monaghan, which by then also included parts of counties Louth and Meath. He was to remain a member of this House until February 1987.
He was known in the media as "the quiet man" of Dáil Éireann. However, that image belied a great record of service and a high level of work. He had a prodigious output of constituency correspondence and used the parliamentary question system to the full to represent his constituents. When he spoke in the Houses of the Oireachtas or at the county council, people listened because when he thought it worthwhile to speak on a subject, it had to be important.
He was rightly proud of his achievements such as the building of Ballybay College, a vocational school, in 1966 and securing leaving certificate status for it in the 1980s. He was proud also of the advances in road development and housing, and had a particular interest in health and agriculture. He was a Deputy in a Border constituency during a difficult period in our history and he never shied away from his duty as a Member of this House to see to it that the law of the land was respected and upheld in every manner and by every means.
John F. Conlan's political philosophy was sound and very straightforward. He saw politics as a means of serving the people. Politics was the living out of the democratic will of the people, in his case the people of Monaghan and Cavan. He was not one for the sound bite or the high political drama. He was a quiet gentleman who represented his people faithfully and well. He was a man of the utmost integrity and honesty. He was not in politics for financial gain. As the monsignor in Ballybay said at his funeral: "John Francis did not make a fortune from politics, he made his riches in the good works he did for other people".
As well as a politician, John Francis Conlan was a great community person. He was secretary of the Ballybay Pearse Brothers GAA club in the 1950s and spearheaded the development of Pearse Park in Ballybay, for many years one of the foremost venues in Ulster. He was registrar of Monaghan county board from 1955 until 1970 and was a proud Ulsterman who never forgot his Ulster heritage.
In the words of another Monaghan man, the Inniskeen poet Patrick Kavanagh:
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided,
These words could have been written about John Francis Conlan. There were many great events in the life of John Francis Conlan, political, family, community, GAA, but to him there was only one important place — Monaghan, and Ballybay. He served it and its people well.
Today we can learn from that legacy and his record of service and, above all, from his straightforward and dignified sense of patriotism. I knew John F. Conlan well for many years and he was always someone who gave good personal advice, was the essence of courtesy and, in this House, had particular friends in Dick Barry from Cork, the late Paddy Reilly from Cavan and the late Dinny Farrelly from Kilmainham Wood. We sympathise with John F.'s wife Lily, his son Seán, who is in the Distinguished Visitors' Gallery, and his daughter Marie-Therese. John F. Conlan could only be described as being as fine a Christian gentleman as one could ever have the opportunity to meet. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
