TRIBUTES:U2 LEAD singer Bono yesterday paid tribute to Dr Garret FitzGerald and outlined why the band had lent their public support to the former taoiseach and to Fine Gael during the 1980s.
Bono, whose given name is Paul Hewson, said Dr FitzGerald had “rebranded” Ireland with his grace and intellect. He said he felt proud when Dr Fitzgerald had led the country.
“I remember feeling very proud that he was our leader,” he said.
He recalled meeting Dr Fitz-Gerald for the first time in the early 1980s when they were on the same flight from London to Dublin.
Bono described the late Dr Fitz-Gerald as “a class act, cut crystal, diamond mine of information, statistics, the detail of people’s lives, that he so cared about”.
Bono invited Dr FitzGerald to the band’s studio and was also photographed with the then Fine Gael leader during the election campaigns. Bono was a supporter of the Fine Gael constitutional crusade. Bono, who is in the US at present, also praised Dr Fitz-Gerald for his honesty and integrity, saying he always played by the rules where others did not.
Former DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley also described the late Dr FitzGerald as a “decent” man yesterday. But he added that the former taoiseach had “failed” to understand Northern unionism.
Dr Paisley insisted the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was signed by Dr FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher in November 1985, placed a “boot on the necks of the unionist people of Northern Ireland”.
Commenting on the death of the former taoiseach, Dr Paisley told UTV: “I thought, in his own way, he was a decent man . . . But I didn’t like what he did on the majority unionist population. Going behind our backs and entering into an agreement with the British government.”
He denied the agreement between Dublin and London was a landmark improvement in relations between Ireland and Britain and that it fostered the subsequent peace process.
“I don’t think it was a milestone on the road to peace,” he said. “I think it was a milestone on the road to put their boot on the necks of the unionist people of Northern Ireland.”
However, Dr Paisley (85) conceded: “A decent enough man, but I don’t think he understood what made a unionist tick – and I think that was a sad failure.”
Former leading Irish-American senator Chris Dodd from Connecticut also paid tribute to the former taoiseach. In a statement issued last night, he said Dr FitzGerald had “laid the groundwork for ending an era of conflict that had divided the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland for decades”.
The former French foreign minister Roland Dumas also praised Dr FitzGerald as a “charming person”.
He told RTÉ that he and Dr FitzGerald had met on a number of occasions when Francois Mitterrand was French president, and had “very good discussions” on the economy and European matters.