John Bruton told the Dail this week that for his maiden speech in 1969 he chose the "esoteric and irrelevant subject of the Grass Meat Bill". Paying tribute to the late Paddy Donegan, he said he approached the senior party figure "with some timidity" for help. He wanted to speak on a topic sufficiently minor not to appear to be overstepping the mark as a junior deputy. "Instead of being discouraged, I could not have been more encouraged by Paddy Donegan. Not only did he say - `of course, speak' - he invited me to have a meal in his club, which he did not have to name, but which was the Stephen's Green Club, with a number of people in the grass meal industry, so that I could hear exactly what he was hearing about how best to approach the Bill."
Brendan McGahon, who succeeded Donegan in Co Louth, made a less esoteric contribution to the tributes: "Paddy had a few detractors in the press, but who does not? They were all part of the arty-farty congregration, or, to borrow a word from the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, `pinkos'."