‘While taoiseach, John’s compassion helped to make Ireland a kinder and better country’
IT IS a unique club. Five men who have served as taoiseach assembled yesterday to pay their last respects to a sixth, John Bruton. As well as the incumbent, Leo Varadkar, also present at the State funeral were Micheál Martin, Enda Kenny, Bertie Ahern, and Brian Cowen.
The one who most personally felt the loss was Enda Kenny, saying his last farewell to a friend of over 50 years with both having first been elected in their early twenties.
Unusually for a politician’s funeral, there were no eulogies during the Mass, as the former bishop in the Meath diocese, Michael Smith, long ago decreed that they take place only at the cemetery. His successor, the Most Rev Tom Deenihan, performed the final commendation, while Jesuit priest Fr Bruce Bradley SJ spoke warmly of Mr Bruton in what he emphasised was a homily, and not a eulogy.
He concentrated on the late former taoiseach’s strong Catholic faith, saying, ‘He was a seriously religious man.
‘There is a temptation in our culture just now to ignore this aspect of people’s lives, as if it were too marginal or too private and embarrassing to bring up in public, or as having too little to do with the real world.’
As it happened, this was a deeply religious and solemn Requiem Mass, though not without human touches. As Leo Varadkar said in his later graveside oration, one of the lessons he learned from Mr Bruton, who presided over the Rainbow Coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left in the mid-nineties, was how to manage a three-way coalition.
As if to underline that, as Finbarr Wright was singing the first hymn, Our Lady Of Knock, the three party leaders in the current coalition – Mr Varadkar, Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin and the Green Party’s Eamon Ryan – went to the front pew together to sympathise with Mr Bruton’s widow, Finola, their children Matthew, Juliana BrutonDubois, Mary-Elizabeth Bruton and Emily Bruton Iniekio, and siblings Mary, and Richard Bruton TD.
The symbols – a family photo and a copy of Mr Bruton’s book Faith and Politics – and the offertory gifts were borne by four young grandchildren, Oliver and Robin Iniekio, and Ophelia and Hugo Bruton-Dubois.
Mr Bruton’s age – at 76, second youngest of all former holders of the office to die – meant many of his contemporaries attended, including Alan Dukes, whom in 1990 he replaced as Fine Gael leader. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald arrived with new First Minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill, while former tánaistí Joan Burton, Mary Coughlan, and Simon Coveney also attended. So too did Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh, the European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, Senators Jerry Buttimer and Neale Richmond, Renua founder Lucinda Creighton with her daughter, Justice Minster Helen McEntee, minister of state Jack Chambers, and former Labour leader Brendan Howlin.
British ambassador Paul Johnston was among the members of the diplomatic corps present, while the Church of Ireland Bishop of Kildare and Meath, The Most Reverend Pat Storey, attended with her husband, the Rev Earl Storey.
The most senior guest, President Michael D Higgins, was, as protocol demands, the last to be seated.
When Mass ended, Mr Bruton’s coffin was laid on a gun carriage by a party of army pallbearers and his family walked behind the tricolourdraped coffin to Rooske cemetery.
There, Leo Varadkar summed up Mr Bruton’s life: ‘We saw John’s compassion in action, as he helped navigate changes which made Ireland a kinder and better country.’