The death of Garret FitzGerald - 'Dr FitzGerald' was his official appellation, but he was happily known throughout the country as 'Garret' - came as a sudden, keening shock to me. I had a vague awareness that he was unwell, and had marked his absence from the various ceremonial occasions of the Queen's visit. But - dead, gone, so abruptly? He was such an ineluctable feature of the landscape that his absence, at first, made no sense. And yet, with his removal, it was possible to look afresh and marvel at how much that landscape had been changed by him, how Ireland had been so utterly and thankfully altered by his energies and endeavours.
Garret was, without compare, the great voice of Irish liberalism of the 20th century. Indeed, he was the only 'liberal' leader the state has ever had, and the only (self-styled) 'Social Democrat' to obtain any kind of popular electoral ratification. He was a member of a grand cohort of Irish worthies that encompassed, among others, Seamus Heaney, Mary Robinson, and John Hume - who, in diverse ways, sought to make the country more open, more prosperous, and (most importantly) more peaceful. And while this group exerted a tremendous moral power in Ireland, Garret alone handled real power as Taoiseach, and was in a position to try and convert ideas about economic and constitutional change into some form of legislative action.
Alas, his many efforts often came up against intransigent resistance or bad luck (or both), and his ambit of manoeuvre in the 1980s was severely constricted by the dreadful fiscal crisis which he inherited from his predecessor. 'Right leader, wrong time' was a common analysis of his premiership. 'Think of what he could have done if he had governed in the boom,' a friend noted ruefully on Thursday night. 'We'd be like a little Sweden by now.' This misses the fact that in Garret, the hour very much found its man. For it was in the dank gloom of the '80s - the Republic sunk in recession, the North in sectarian war - that Ireland most needed his attention, his intellect, and his example. Indefatigable in staving off national ruin, he was no less eager to foster and create a vision of a better, more just society. If he was constrained to fight with one arm behind his back, so be it; but fight he did.
His efforts on behalf of the state touched upon almost every facet of national life. An economist, he worked to bring Ireland, then far behind, up to the European standard of living (which it now exceeds). A learned Catholic, he powered the early charge of a 'constitutional crusade' - which would succeed, eventually, in moving society beyond the null zone of cramped confessional piety. A committed European, he ensured that Ireland took its full place among the nations of the Union. And in the North, he was tireless and matchless in seeking to bind the various warring factions to some kind of negotiated peace. Ireland - all of Ireland - is the better for his extraordinary ministrations. 'Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.'
More important than all of this, perhaps, was the sense of integrity and honesty you got from him - the overarching sense that public service and national purpose had found their most justly adapted expression. (The contrast with his great rival could not have been more stark.) A scholar of note, a statesman of high regard, he was also possessed of a wry and occassionally goofy sense of humour. The quiet warmth and modest bearing that marked his person belied the transformative significance of his career. He was, for many people of my generation, the first and perhaps only Irish politician we would ever look up to. He worked to change Ireland - and change Ireland he did. We are all in his debt as a result. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. (Sean Coleman)