'I remember Mrs Thatcher saying the north of Ireland 'was as British as Finchley'. Well, we proved that it wasn't." Peter Barry, interviewed last November on the 30th anniversary of the Anglo-Irish Agrement was typically modest about his own role in the process of getting it over the line.
“It took years to happen, many bumps along the way, a lot of false starts, some cul-de-sacs, “he said of his efforts to bang unionist and nationalist heads together in the North. “Somebody said to me once, ‘Sure that is going to fail again so what are you going to do?’ And I said ‘start all over again.’ You could not leave that problem there.” He got a lot of abuse on the unionist streets for his efforts.
It was a statement also eloquent about the quiet determination that drove him, about how he did politics, and his passion about the North, a passion shared with Garret FitzGerald, although somewhat more nationalist than the latter. He developed particularly strong relations with the SDLP's Seamus Mallon, not a natural ally of Fine Gael.
He would be the first joint chairman of the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference formed by the Irish and British governments.
In truth, the agreement, which set in train the process that would deliver the Belfast Agreement in 1998, is very much part of his legacy as well as FitzGerald's.
Fine Gael yesterday lost a highly regarded elder statesman of the party, once its deputy leader, twice its potential leader, a man one described as “unquestionably the best taoiseach this country nearly had”, a genuinely decent man admired across the party and his beloved Cork which he served for 28 years as a TD. Barry rose to senior ministerial office and displayed in each portfolio the quiet, unfussy competence of a successful tea merchant, a doer rather than an ideologue. What drove him appeared to be public service rather than political ambition. He was no media schmoozer.
He occupied the middle ground in the party politically, no mongrel fox, but strogly supported FitzGerald as leader to the point, perhaps uncomfortably, of chairing the party's divorce referendum campaign in '96 and taking some flak when it went down. And it was perhaps his more conservative leanings which saw him defeated in the leadership contest against the moderniser Alan Dukes. That hurt. The latter tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to stand for president in 1990.
The Barry political dynasty thrives, much like the family tea empire. First father, Anthony, then Peter, now daughter and MEP Deirdre Clune – she once told the party ard fheis that "I was born with a Fine Gael membership card in my hand". It could be said of her father too, and that he died clenching it firmly.