Matt Merrigan was "a very catholic man", the ATGWU Irish secretary, Mr Mick O'Reilly, told mourners at the union leader's funeral in Glasnevin, Dublin, yesterday.
"He could have a meeting with the far left in the morning, the ICTU bureaucracy in the afternoon and individual workers about their grievances that night."
It was certainly a very catholic congregation that gathered at the crematorium to hear tributes and songs to commemorate Mr Merrigan's passing. He had collapsed and died at the ATGWU conference last week.
The mourners included the president of the Labour Party, Mr Proinsias De Rossa MEP; the general secretary of the ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells; Labour TD Mr Eric Byrne; the general secretary of SIPTU, Mr John McDonnell, and its vice-president, Mr Jack O'Connor; the general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, Mr Blair Horan; the secretary of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions, Mr Sam Nolan, and the former Labour Party Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Michael O'Halloran.
There were messages of condolences from the former general secretary of the British Transport and General Workers' Union, Mr Jack Jones, the Irish-American Labour Coalition and the president of Sinn Fein, Mr Gerry Adams MLA.
But there were no clergy. Mr Merrigan's son Matt said that his father had told him he wanted "no spoofers" officiating when he died. Mr Merrigan, a national industrial secretary with SIPTU, said his father "would have loved to have had a captive audience like this. If you had all turned up to hear him when he as alive we wouldn't be in the mess we are now."
After Mr Merrigan retired he continued to work for people through the Senior Citizens' Parliament, the ICTU retired workers' committee and other bodies.
On behalf of his sister Olga and brother Maurice, Mr Merrigan said his father was "the most kind-hearted, honest, decent man we have known".