One of the quiet unsung heroes of the industrial and economic development of this country, Donal Loghlen O'Sullivan, died on March 11th after a lifetime devoted to the service of others - and especially to the pursuit of improved workplace health and safety.
A highly influential and progressive figure in this area, his professional legacy is undoubtedly the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 1989, which represented a significant leap forward from the disparate and grossly inadequate regulatory regime previously in place. Donal made a decisive contribution to the work of the Barrington Commission which gave rise to the legislation - based upon his own hands-on experience of the day-to-day workplace problems right across the industrial landscape.
Those who were fortunate to know him remember a person of great dignity and compassion matched by real conviction and determination - and in his later years by the inspirational serenity with which he confronted his own ill-health.
Educated at CBS Monkstown and Clongowes Wood College, Donal went to study architecture in UCD but left after two years when he realised that architecture was not the calling that would bring fulfilment to his life. He then set out on a remarkable journey to discover this world and his place in it.
In 1952, he signed up on a liner bound for Australia as a merchant seaman. On this first trip he joined the British Seamen's Union and later the Australian Seamen's Union and with an Australian comrade set up the Catholic Mission for Seamen. His travels and work led him to socialism and the Australian Labour Party.
In 1962, he returned to Ireland and entered UCD again, this time to study economics and politics. As there was no student branch of the Labour Party in the college, Donal founded the Universities Branch of the Labour Party with a few other students from UCD and TCD and became its first chairperson.
On leaving university, he decided to give all his time to the labour and trade union movement. He became an integral part of Labour's renaissance in the mid to late 1960s with his election as the party's financial secretary from 1966 to 1975. This was a time of great optimism for Labour with its greater sense of determination to transform this country from poverty and inequality into a modern and dynamic society.
In 1966, he met his wife Alice who, as a member of the Labour Party, shared his socialist vision of justice and equality for all people. They married the same year.
As a work-study advisor with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, a member of the Irish Work Study Institute, treasurer of the Labour Party, election candidate for the Labour Party in 1969, head of the industrial engineering department of the ITGWU (later SIPTU), or earlier, as head of the School of Management Studies of the Dublin VEC College of Commerce in Rathmines, Donal used his great ability unstintingly in the service of other people as a constructive and practical socialist.
In the ITGWU he was one of the early specialists in the development services division, which assisted the huge expansion of worker education, professional services and technical competence in all aspects of work organisation, pay systems and productivity.
However, Donal will be best remembered for his pioneering work in health and safety. He not only improved the working conditions of employees in many individual workplaces, but also made a strategic impact at national level as president of the National Industrial Safety Organisation and as a member of the Barrington Commission. With Donal O'Sullivan as its vice-chair, the latter's ground-breaking report led to the Safety, Health and Welfare Act of 1989 and to the formation of the Health and Safety Authority.
He represented the Irish workers on various committees and commissions of the European Union in Brussels, helping to negotiate new directives on health and safety in the working environment - and appropriately, in view of his early working life, he chaired EU Special Committee on Safety at Sea.
He was a true gentleman and nearly always achieved his objectives in a conciliatory manner, but was not afraid to be forthright when the occasion required it.
We all regret that Donal did not live longer to enjoy a fuller retirement with his family to which he was devoted. But I also know that the quality of the time he spent with us, the values he represented and worked for will forever live in the hearts and minds of all those he touched.
He survived by his wife Alice, three children, Elva, Marc and Lucie, and grandson, Loghlen.
D.G.