He was buried wearing the cap. It could not have been any other way. Charlie Chaplin had his bowler. John Wayne had his Stetson. And Jackie Healy-Rae had his peaked tartan cap.
The cap was synonymous with him. It was also synonymous with a peculiar offshoot of Irish politics that could loosely be defined as follows: Independent; South Kerry; localism; Fianna Fáil instincts; dynastic; clientelism; Kilgarvan; chutzpah and showbiz. He was also a masterful communicator – his rich native vocabulary delivered in an accent honed on the slopes of Mangerton Mountain.
To borrow his own words, there was none like him “in this wide earthly world”.
The man with the cap was buried yesterday, in the graveyard of his native village of Kilgarvan in the highlands of South Kerry. For a man who first came to national prominence at the age of 66, his impact has been staggering.
That was well illustrated by the presence of two former taoisigh, Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern; Fianna Fáil leader Mícheál Martin; and a large delegation of local and national politicians.
If there was ambivalence or antipathy towards him elsewhere, it wasn’t shared in South Kerry. As the temperatures dipped to close to zero over the weekend and wintry squalls hurried through the valley, several thousand of those whom Healy-Rae represented – “the plain people who eat their dinner in the middle of the day” – queued up for hours to pay tribute to the 83-year-old, who was a TD for 14 years.
Smooth roads It’s not hard to see what he has left to posterity. The further west you go the more bockety the roads are. But the 10km stretch of road through the mountains from Loo Bridge to Kilgarvan is like something you would find in the Swiss Alps, smooth and untroubled by potholes.
You find the other products of Healy-Rae deals with successive Fianna Fáil governments dotted around South Kerry; a roundabout on the outskirts of Killarney, improvements to the R569, services in various hospitals, especially in Kenmare.
Healy-Rae, in his time, was able to combine a very traditionalist approach to politics with astute modern communications skills.
In the early morning yesterday, a group of men washed his pet pony, Peig, and tethered her outside the family pub in Kilgarvan. It was a John Hinde moment.
The Darby O’Gill stuff was partly cultivated. A mobile phone was seldom separated from his ear and he used the air waves astutely when hype was called for.
Brian Cowen described the two sides well: “He was one of the old characters, a throwback to a different time.
“He was a guy not to be underestimated. He knew how to communicate. He was very knowledgeable about what his local priorities were.”
Bertie Ahern put it a little differently. He said a Teachta Dála, by definition, was not so much a legislator but one who represented his public. “That’s what Jackie was. He was a public representative who represented the public.”
Eventful life The funeral commemorated a long and eventful life. The gifts were carried up by his six children; each symbolising different periods: his impoverished childhood, his skills as an entrepreneur; his gaiscí on the hurling field; and his musicality (he played melodeon and saxophone).
And then there was the politics. From the time he helped John O’Leary get elected in a byelection in 1966, Healy-Rae showed a gift for timing and a sense of how to lift a crowd. No one was better at orchestrating rallies and getting “fierce massive crowds”.
His son Danny recalled how deep politics seeped. On the day of his wedding to his wife, Eileen, Jackie dragged the newlyweds from the hotel in Killarney to a local hall for a convention “where my father was a candidate, or meant to be a candidate, and we could not go back to the wedding any more”.
Chief celebrant at the Mass Fr Con Buckley said his “greatness was in never losing touch with his family roots and the people who elected him”.
Touching tribute Danny’s tribute was long but touching. “He was always a yard ahead of the rest of his opponents, be it on the hurling field or on the political field. He started before the ball was thrown in and he played till the final whistle was blown.”
In South Kerry, he was a formidable director of elections, famously ensuring two seats for Fianna Fáil in 1987 when he got John O’Leary and John O’Donoghue within 23 votes of each other.
But in 1997 his own ambitions were thwarted when he was rejected at convention. He stood as an Independent. “The time had come for me to get in or get out and now that I’m in they can find it damn hard to shift me,” he said.
Thus started a late flowering and a very idiosyncratic form of politics with the famous “deals” for South Kerry.
His other son, Michael, the deputy for South Kerry, was more to the point and pointed in his eulogy. He said the money his father got went “beyond the Red Cow Roundabout” but was well spent, castigating the national media for ridiculing the family.
No one was better at organising rallies in South Kerry. Now that the final whistle has been blown, there will be few bigger than his final rally, where “fierce massive crowds” came to pay their respects to the man in the tartan cap.
