A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It’s been a week for political departures – and Galway for sure has lost a couple of people who made a real difference to the life and prosperity of the city and county, not to mention reaching out to Galwegians the world over.

The saddest departure was of course the death of Billy Lawless, a man who epitomised all that is good about Galway, bringing that love of his native place to the other side of the Atlantic where he made an unquantifiable difference to the lives of so many of his fellow Irish otherwise destined to live their lives in the shadows.

And departing the political stage as the hammer fell on the 33rd Dáil, the retirements of Galway West Deputy Éamon Ó Cuiv and Galway East Deputy Ciaran Cannon brought the curtain down on the political careers of two other men who had the best interests of their county in their hearts and souls.

Mention too of Denis Naughten whose political reach may have only just stretched into Galway – but he too served did the county some service; he was a vocal advocate for investment in Ballinasloe and Portiuncula Hospital in particular.

Billy Lawless was a proud Galway man with the vision to see a wider world, and his inspired appointment as a member of Seanad Eireann opened more doors on the other side of the Atlantic that we here could ever imagine.

Because while Americans aren’t overly impressed with the political designation of Deputy, they – unlike us perhaps – see a Senator as a person of real political influence. Because it’s a political title they understand themselves, albeit in a different context.

Not that Billy needed a political prefix to blow down the doors; he was a friend of Barack Obama when the future US President was an up-and-coming Senator for Illinois, and he knew his way in and out of the White House under several Presidents.

But the Menlo man wasn’t all that pushed about celebrity; he used that access to advocate for US Immigration Reform almost from the day he arrived in Chicago in 1997.

For close on three decades that followed, he kept a foot on both sides of the ocean, frequently returning to Galway where his political passion burned as brightly as ever.