I was among those tallying the Wexford count in the 1987 general election. During an early evening break, after the first count, all adjourned to the local hotel for high tea, writes Noel Whelan
There the Fianna Fáil number crunchers pored over the tally data for a further hour. They came back to the count centre near certain in their view that Fianna Fáil would win three seats and Fine Gael two - a reversal of the 1982 result. The leading Fine Gael figures at the count centre agreed privately that this would be the case.
The mood in the Fianna Fáil camp changed shortly afterwards, however. One of the tallymen had brought a radio with him. When the panel with Gerard Barry in the RTÉ election studio came to consider the Wexford numbers, former Fine Gael director of elections Seán O'Leary, while accepting that Fine Gael would not win three seats, argued that Labour's Brendan Howlin and not Fianna Fáil's Lorcan Allen would win the last seat.
It was a mark of the respect in which Seán O'Leary's knowledge of constituencies was held, even among Fianna Fáilers, that there was an immediate flurry of activity around the hall in Wexford.
All camps huddled again to revisit their tally figures. Over the course of many long counts O'Leary's theory proved correct and Brendan Howlin's Dáil career began.
For me the excitement of being at the Wexford count was tempered by the fact that I couldn't adequately follow the detail of what was happening around the country. Like many, my preference on count day was to sit in front of television with a radio at my ear watching and listening as the national picture took shape, count by count, constituency by constituency.
In those days computer graphics and outside broadcast technology were less sophisticated. This underscored the ability of people like Seán O'Leary on radio and Trinity College Prof Basil Chubb on television to analyse the significance of data pouring into the studio and make sense of what was happening. O'Leary was good at it and had been a star of result-coverage of the three elections in the 1981-1982 period.
When first appointed Fine Gael's director of elections for the 1981 campaign, Seán O'Leary was taking on a job which had hitherto in Fine Gael, as in all parties, been held by a senior politician. A pattern developed whereby, as soon as an election was called or was in the offing, O'Leary would get the call in Cork, pack his bags and head to Dublin for four weeks.
There from a designated desk in the party's Dublin Mount Street headquarters he would marshal Fine Gael's forces in the constituencies as well as co-ordinating much of the national campaign. When the director of elections was required to do media, O'Leary was a staunch and effective spokesman for his party.
Once polling day was over, however, he adopted a different persona. As he saw it, nothing more could be done for his beloved Fine Gael once the ballot boxes were closed so for the post-election coverage he put party spin aside. For him the numbers did not lie and he was straight-talking about what they showed.
O'Leary's instinct for politics came in part from his professional training. He was first an accountant and then a barrister. It came also from his own direct experience in the electoral wars - as a Dáil candidate in Cork on four different occasions and as a member of many Fine Gael strategy committees. He had a phenomenal capacity to crunch volumes of constituency data.
After the 1981 election Garret FitzGerald appointed him to the Seanad - an honour often bestowed on leading backroom operators but one O'Leary proved most deserving of since he was capable of addressing a range of issues in the Upper House.
His appointment as a Circuit Court judge in the mid-1990s was a gain for the bench but a loss to Fine Gael's electoral effort and indeed to public opinion polling. In his time as a judge O'Leary chaired the inquiries which preceded the building of the two Luas lines.
It is said that in preparation he walked the proposed routes, a tale consistent with his reputation for thoroughness. It was a mark of his standing that the current Government appointed him to the High Court and to chair the Residential Redress Board.
Some years ago I wrote a book on electoral law and sent the text to O'Leary, asking if he would write a foreword. He wrote back, returning the manuscript, expressed himself flattered, but declined, feeling that it would only serve to emphasise his political past, which he felt might be unwise.
He did, however, take the time to make a few pertinent scribbles at a number of points on the text.
About a year ago, a mutual friend, when he realised O'Leary and I had never met, invited us both to dinner. The conversation quickly turned to a consideration of the prospects in various constituencies for next year's election.
Although the proprieties of judicial office restricted him from commenting on elections publicly, it was clear he retained a detailed knowledge of and interest in the minutiae of the electoral battles.
He had a fascinating insight that evening - gems of analysis, of which I made careful mental note. We discussed how, maybe after he retired from the bench, he could return to public commentary on elections but he was unsure of the propriety of that also.
Sadly, fate has now dealt a different hand. After a sudden illness, he died last weekend. Seán O'Leary's contribution to the law and to Fine Gael has been noted elsewhere. It is appropriate this weekend that his contribution to politics generally is also recognised.