This is a day of genuine and universal sadness in these Houses and in our country. No one was better loved, or better deserved to be loved, than our friend and colleague, Brian Lenihan. He had friends and admirers in all parties at all times.
The first phrase that comes to mind when one thinks of Brian Lenihan is loveable. He was warm, gregarious and fun loving. He had an infinite capacity for living and for life. Friendship came naturally to him. It was friendship that transcended party boundaries, nationality and age.
However, behind the warmth and the fun there was a fine mind and a very fine brain. He was very well and widely read and was a sharp observer, especially of the foibles of his fellow men and fellow politicians. He also had a deep sense of history and a great and genuine love of his country.
He was an extraordinarily able politician.When he applied himself, his grasp of detail was huge, his intellect sharp and he could bring to the most mundane of debates rare insights and very sharp observations. He was a person who thought a great deal and reflected on the big issues and on history.These reflections would be given to us, whether in debates or while enjoying one of the chats he had with virtually everybody in the House. He was an original thinker and he could bring that originality to bear on the big issues of our time.
It is as a companion and friend that many people here will best remember him. To sit with him, listen to him and chat with him was an education. New Members who came into this House very quickly came under his influence and would very quickly be beguiled and entranced by him as a companion. Although he was never pompous and never took himself too seriously, he had the capacity to say very serious things on a very wide range of issues.
To travel with Brian Lenihan was, in the first instance, to enjoy the experience, but also to see the breadth of his learning. He was a true European. He had a great sense of Europe and a great sense of the adventure and the excitement of bringing the country into Europe and deepening our relationship with Europe. However, as he showed in his later years as Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, his grasp was not just European; he had a global grasp of the big events.
To all of us, Brian Lenihan always seemed young, yet it is extraordinary to think today that he was one of the last links in these Houses with that great earlier generation. When he was first elected to the Seanad, Éamon de Valera was Taoiseach. He served under Seán Lemass and with people like Frank Aiken, Seán McEntee and others. For somebody interested in history, it was always an education to listen to Brian's stories, the observations, the anecdotes and the insights he had of that generation, a generation which certainly influenced him, and many of whose values he retained and exemplified to the day of his death.
Brian was, of course, a Fianna Fáil man first, middle and last. To my colleagues and my friends in Fianna Fáil, you have lost a great servant, a great patriot, one of your finest ever. Your loss is truly great. These Houses have also lost a great parliamentarian. In my early days in the other House, it was always a joy to watch his parliamentary jousts with John Kelly, two of the great parliamentarians, two men of sharp intellect, of great humour and erudition, both of whom enjoyed the jousts and the with across the floor. It is something I have not experienced in these Houses since. Brian was a great parliamentarian who loved Parliament. He respected the Houses of Parliament. It was bred in him; it was in every pore of his body.
Most of all, Brian Lenihan was a family man. He had a fine family, whom he loved dearly, as they loved him. He was a genuinely good man, a decent man. To his family, especially, we send our deepest sympathy today.