World of Politics with Harry McGee

There have been a lot of changes this year in politics – and we’re only over the halfway point; two leaders standing down, a host  of politicians announcing their retirement, a new Minister for Finance and a new  European Commissioner.   For me, though, the most significant moment of last week was the death of Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh. I was privileged to know him fairly well and to have interviewed him in depth over the years – about his home place, his upbringing, his love for the GAA, and his love for the Irish language.

He was not a political figure at all but his advocacy of a form of Irish culture and his championing of Irish were surely very potent forces in our society over the years. We were all the better because of him.

I travelled down to Dingle last Saturday for his funeral. As his great friend, and fellow broadcasting poet Micheál Ó Sé, said: “The microphone in his hand was like the brush in the hand of a great master.”

In a tribute to his friend at the Funeral Mass, Ó Sé said: “He loved to the bottom of his heart those big occasions where the crowds would gather. The crowd would give a surge of energy to his wonderful commentary, which was unequalled.

“He was always proud of his heritage, of the language of his own people, and was especially fond of the games that gave him so much pleasure. He related those games in such a way that his radio audiences derived the same pleasures and satisfaction from them as he did,” he said.

Ó Sé evoked the ‘ball seirce”, which was the skin blemish on the forehead of the Irish mythological figure, Diarmuid Ua Duibne (the lover of Gráinne) which made him irresistible to women.

He said that the voice, the wit, the poetry and Dún Síon accent of Mr Ó Muircheartaigh was like a ‘ball seirce’ that drew people irresistibly to their radios to listen to his wonderful commentary.

Pictured: Future leader…Jack Chambers on a previous visit to Galway meeting young Niamh Flynn, following the opening of Scoil Bhríde Mionloch.