PATRICK NOLAN: Patrick Nolan, who has died aged 76, was a former industrial and religious affairs correspondent for The Irish Times. He was also a major figure in the National Union of Journalists, whose campaigns with others led to significant improvements for journalists' pay and conditions in the 1960s and 1970s.
He held most of the senior positions in the union in his time and was at one period effectively the NUJ leader in Ireland.
He was the first industrial correspondent for the paper, appointed in 1969, and was praised by both employers and union leaders for "always getting it right". His work contributed greatly to the success of the paper during that era, creating a new readership in the industrial relations field.
Socially radical but religiously conservative, he was in a more difficult position as religious affairs correspondent. He held the post from 1976 to 1988, a time when the controversial liberal social agenda was promoted by the paper. But at the end of the 1983 abortion referendum campaign he wrote a piece entitled "why I am voting Yes" (i.e., in favour of the amendment) which concluded by calling on all Christians "to act together to remove the reasons for abortion".
He covered Pope John Paul's early visits to Poland and Mexico, and he never revealed his source for the exclusive report that Pope John Paul was coming to Ireland in 1979.
Nolan was a devout Catholic who combined his religion with a natural socialism. He believed in the power of collective effort, whether in the union or in his local residents' association in Glenageary, or earlier with the Legion of Mary and St Vincent de Paul. He also joined ecumenical study groups.
As a young journalist on the Anglo-Celt in Cavan, he pursued equity with motorists for motor-cyclists, negotiating a uniform mileage rate of 3d per mile. He was also known locally for his terrifyingly fast pace between news markings.
Nolan joined The Irish Times in 1954. He was a founder member of the paper's credit union, and became Father of the Chapel (FOC) in 1969. He is remembered by many for his diligent representation of individual cases, his determination to improve staffing levels, and most of all, pensions. He was elected an honorary member of the NUJ.
He served for 10 years on the union's National Executive Council, where he campaigned for a full-time Irish organiser. When he was offered the position, he refused to accept unless a levy was imposed on Irish members to pay for it, so that Irish members would not be "beholden" to the British-based union. The position remained unfilled until it was taken by Jim Eadie.
Patrick Nolan was from Westport, Co Mayo, where he attended the Christian Brothers. His parents, Dominick and Kate, ran a farm. His first jobs were with the Mayo News and the then Carlow Nationalist.
He met his wife, teacher Eileen Donegan, shortly after joining The Irish Times. They married in 1957. She recalls that he spent little on himself, but invested for their children in the further education that he himself had never had. "He never wanted anything back," she says.
A man whose sense of decency and integrity was known to all, he also had a mischievous and even anarchic side. One story concerns a visit to Ireland of a Russian trade union delegation, following a 1967 visit by himself and Wesley Boyd to Soviet Russia, which he admired.
He brought his guests to his suburban home, where the traditional vodka toasts were drunk. A fireplace was not available for the customary smashing of glasses, so Nolan opened the oven to complete the ritual.
When telephone interviewees failed to give the information he wanted he had an impetuous habit of slamming the phone down. In one incident famous in the annals of the staff, he grew so impatient with a ringing phone while he was on another line that he took out a penknife and cut the line. It remained dangling from the ceiling for months.
His sense of humour was also apparent when he drew attention with a grin on his face to the annual Good Friday Retreats for Journalists. Though not an Irish speaker, he had an endearing habit of addressing close colleagues as "a ghrá".
His hobbies included walking and reading, and he loved travel. He visited widely in Europe and the US, and after retirement, he wanted to go further east, including China.
Only four years after his retirement in 1993 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and spent the past seven years in Hampstead Private Nursing Home, Glasnevin, where he died.
He is survived by his wife Eileen (Nellie); sons Lorcan and his partner Angela, John and his wife Eileen, Victor and Peter, daughter Emer and partner Seamus, brothers Tommie and Peter, sister Beatrice, as well as four grandchildren. He was predeceased by a brother John and sister Mary.
Patrick Joseph Nolan: Born March 27th, 1928; died August 18th, 2004.