Madam, – Dr Garret FitzGerald’s death was indeed saddening news. In 2004 I approached Dr FitzGerald to ask if he would write the foreword to a new book a colleague and I were putting together, evaluating whether the fair employment initiative of 15 years before had resulted in an evening up of employment opportunities for Catholics with Protestants as it had sought to do.
Our assessment was that there was clear evidence that major strides towards equality had been made. After several weeks of silence I received a clear endorsement of our research when I received a message that he would indeed be willing to do so. Moreover, he asked if he could contribute in any other way to the launch of the book as he believed that the message we were conveying, based on rigorous empirical evidence, was an important part of bringing peace.
He spoke at the launch of the book in the Linenhall Library the following year and engaged with the late Bob Cooper, champion of fair employment and former Alliance member of the 1974 power-sharing executive, in a free-wheeling discussion about Irish politics, North and South. Two years later I received a phone call from Dr FitzGerald who said he had a few spare hours in Belfast and could we meet? There followed the most wideranging one-on-one “seminar” I ever experienced in over 30 years of academic life.
Dr FitzGerald was truly a “renaissance man” and a real friend of those of us who live in Northern Ireland. His loss to public life on this island is huge. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – A memorial for Garret? It surely has to be a column: modest, upright, enduring, multifaceted, multi-lingual, accommodating words, figures and statistical data; its splendour derived, not from any costly display or the international repute of an artistic creator but from the greatness of the person it memorializes: Just Garret. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I seriously doubt Garret FitzGerald would find any pleasure in having an airline terminal or city centre street re-named in his honour.
However, I think he would be very pleased if a countrywide scholarship fund was created in his name to give grants for third-level education. – Yours, etc,