I am pleased that Noreen, the wife of the late Liam Burke, as well as his sisters Mary and Kitty are in the distinguished visitors' gallery today. They are welcome, although I know that it is an occasion tinged with a degree of nostalgia and sadness for them all. Generally, the public have a dim view of politicians and the amount of work they do. However, every time we come together in this House to pay tribute to a colleague who has passed on, it strikes me that there is one group of people who could disavow the public of that dim view and it is the family of the Deputy, sitting in the gallery to hear the tributes to a wife, a father, a husband or a mother. On this occasion, Noreen, his sisters and daughters, Catherine and Emma, will remember and know about the weekends when the telephone and the doorbell never stopped ringing and when Liam would have got up from Sunday lunch to take a quick call only to arrive home after midnight.
Liam Burke's family, no more than other families of political representatives, know all about the nights when one would not put a dog out in Churchfield in Gurranabraher but Liam Burke still went knocking door to door, and if he did not do Fairhill, he knew that the people there would give out. Therefore, on an occasion like this, it is the families in the gallery who are among our best witnesses.
I am honoured to lead the tributes to former Deputy Liam Burke. Fine Gael learnt of Liam's death with great sadness. In losing him we lost a loyal colleague, a grassroots politician and a true friend, but the loss for his wife, Noreen, his daughters, Catherine and Emma, and his wider family is entirely different. Theirs is an essential loss. In losing him they lost a loving husband and a devoted father and I am sure the House joins with me in offering them our sincere sympathy.
Liam Burke was a man of extraordinary kindness and generosity, a public servant, passionate about his people and, above all, a Corkman devoted to his city, which, as he liked to remind us constantly, was the real capital of Ireland.
At his funeral I told a story about a father in Cork giving his son last minute advice as the young fellow set off on the big move to Dublin. The father sat his son down in the bar in Kent Station and said to him, in a Cork accent, "Come here to me boy, it is like this, when you are up in Dublin in the pub do not go on and on all night about how you are from Cork. I know it is not fair boy but even though you are from Cork remember not everyone can be. So like a good young fellow, catch on to yourself and do not rub it in."
Everyone here would agree that was how Liam Burke was about Cork. Cork was his place. The men and women of Whitescross, Blackpool, Shandon Street and Cathedral Road were his people. With a sense of superiority, peculiar to Cork people, and with his sallow good looks that to the rest of us signify a certain breed of handsome Corkman, Liam Burke took the heart of politics, Dáil Éireann and the people of Cork by storm.
A high point in his career was his election as Lord Mayor of Cork. He put the heart crossways in a few people by threatening to resign over what he saw as a funding deficit of the Cork-Swansea ferry. Happily he stayed on when help came in the form a £500,000. He was never easily dissuaded of anything. Liam Burke was a major player, a major personality in Cork politics and a colourful one.
We pay our respects today to the politician who served Cork with passion and purpose for over five decades. Liam's career was inextricably linked with the political changes here and within Fianna Fáil. Liam Burke may well have turned the tide for Fine Gael in the historic by-elections of 1979, which many people will remember, but in doing so he also marked the end of the tenure as Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil of another wonderful Corkman and Irish man, Jack Lynch. Within a month Liam Burke was in, Jack was out, Charles Haughey took over as leader of Fianna Fáil and within 18 months Fine Gael was back in Government.
Liam lived in interesting times and in many ways he created them. His contribution to those times and to politics generally was made even more extraordinary by his ability to experience defeat as well as victory with poise, grace and, above all, at times with his outrageous sense of humour. I suppose a sense of humour was essential in anyone who had had their heart bypassed ten times, as he was fond of telling people. He always took the job seriously but never himself.
He served the people of Cork magnificently. In here he kept a low profile though when he intervened one could not ignore him. Many will remember in 1995 his speaking out after being subjected to abusive telephone calls for speaking out against drug pushers in Cork. "You speak out publicly against these people and their trade at your peril, as I can personally attest", he told the House.
In an honourable career spanning five decades, Liam Burke served in the Dáil and in the Seanad under four Fine Gael leaders, Liam Cosgrave, Garret FitzGerald, Alan Dukes and John Bruton. In that time such was his likability and his canny ability that he became known lovingly as the Silver Fox and with good reason. As Cork public representatives will tell one, these abilities won him a seat in nine elections.
At his funeral in Cork I said that in the Celtic tradition there is a great sense that the dead do not live very far away, that they are our nearest neighbours and that we can sense them. It is not simply that we can do so in his case, his family knows that for a fact. Judging by the tears and the general sadness at his funeral in Cork, there are thousands of people, friends, neighbours, hurlers and greyhound breeders who sense that also.
Today, we honour Liam Burke, a husband, father, citizen, public servant, politician, parliamentarian, Fine Gaeler and Corkman. It is no coincidence that he saved up his leaving for the day of the official commemoration of the death of General Michael Collins at Béal na Blath in which he had a deep and abiding interest.
He has swapped the Dáil and politics for what Seamus Heaney calls "[his] ... proper haunt, Somewhere, well out, beyond...". I thank Liam for his loyalty, courage and friendship. I am proud to have known him, to have understood his ways and to have travelled some of the road with him. Tá súil agam gur ar dheis Dé a bheas a anam dílis.
