Dr John Andrew Oliver: Dr John Andrew Oliver was a distinguished Northern Irish civil servant and author who, as Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Development, contributed enormously to the modernisation of regional planning and local government in the turbulent decade following Terence O'Neill's accession to the premiership of Northern Ireland in 1963. Before openness in government became fashionable, he wrote a ground-breaking memoir on the Stormont Civil Service.
Born in Belfast on October 25th, 1913, the fifth of eight children, he studied at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Queen's University Belfast, where he took modern languages. He went on to travel and study in France, Germany and Switzerland, and at London's Imperial Defence College.
He joined the Northern Ireland Civil Service in October 1937, the first local graduate to enter the fast-stream training programme. In 1938, he served as first secretary to the Northern Ireland Council of Social Service (now the Council for Voluntary Action). During the war, he worked long hours helping to prepare the civil defence against Nazi attack. In the post-war period, he contributed to building a professional public health system, one of his proudest achievements.
During the 1950s, Oliver moved up the ranks and on to housing, slum clearance, and physical planning. He was instrumental in initiating Northern Ireland's first area plans, covering Belfast and the Fermanagh lakeland.
Here his interest was not merely professional: he loved and celebrated the physical beauty of his homeland.
He came into his own as permanent secretary from 1964 to 1974 at the new ministry of development, charged with modernising planning and local government. The ministry was central to Terence O'Neill's social and economic regeneration strategy, and Oliver used his influence to urge hesitant ministers towards tolerance and generosity in the face of a rising tide of protest and counter-protest.
In 1966, he launched a review of Northern Ireland's local councils, which he described as too many, too small and too poor.
He steered through reforms in the franchise and complaints procedures and made an enormous personal contribution to the Macrory Report, which underpinned the radical restructuring of local government in 1973. He oversaw the creation of the Londonderry Development Commission in 1969 to replace a council tainted by allegations of gerrymandering; of the Housing Executive in 1971 to speed up slum clearance and ensure equity in allocating public housing; and of the roads, water and planning services in 1973.
From 1970, the Troubles created a raft of problems for his ministry, which Oliver tackled with energy and equanimity: bombs directed at ministry buildings and services, transport disruption, rent strikes and street protests.
Under Willie Whitelaw's power-sharing agreement of 1973, it was split up to satisfy the demands of political arithmetic: although dismayed at this affront to the principle of administrative efficiency, Oliver enjoyed the stimulus of working albeit briefly with his young minister at housing, local government and planning, the SDLP's Austin Currie, when colleagues recall his strict advice about the impartial treatment of elected ministers.
His last career posting, in 1975-76, was as adviser to the chair of the constitutional convention. Oliver's colleagues recall a valued friend and adviser who had great integrity and a keen analytic mind, but sometimes found it difficult to accept the bleak realities of the North's political landscape.
He married Stella Ritson in 1943, and they had five sons, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
John Oliver: born Belfast, October 25th, 1913, died Yorkshire, May 28th, 2006.