My late father always reckoned Tom Yourell was one of the best judges of character he ever came across. In other words, if the nearest I ever knew to a grandfather got a vibe about someone, time would usually prove him to be right. It’s something I’d like to think I’ve inherited from the old sage. Another way of articulating the same thing – first impressions are generally the correct ones. Now read on…
Personally speaking, that was never more the case than with Damien O’Reilly. I cannot believe that has just been written in the past tense. Indeed, I cannot believe or comprehend much of what has gone on since Saturday last. It has the feel of an ongoing nightmare from which one is waiting to be aroused. Except there is no snapping out of it, no reassurance that it was all just a bad dream and that all is the same as it always been or, mostly, no way of quantifying the void which has been left in people’s lives or how in the name of Christ it can be filled. Or even if it can be.
Mostly, the greatest barrage of disbelief stems from having to do another one of this pieces again. Not for a half a second am I comparing one bereavement, one lot of grief to another, but there’s something akin to getting a size 12 boot in the solar plexus about having to do a piece in eulogy to one of your own generation. Again.
Slick Billy gets an audience with the legend
This shouldn’t be happening. If there is some kind of higher power pulling the levers far away, they can go and take a running jump at this stage. There was something eerily, heartbreakingly apt about one of the lads from Dunshaughlin being among the first to contact yours truly as the devastation currently enveloping so many of us since Damien’s tragic death on Saturday last was beginning to spread like a numbing black cloud.
For the echoes in Damien’s passing to that of Denis Kealy less than three months ago are shudderingly real. Except, and again this is not by way of comparison, but, with Damien, everything is even closer to the bone for me. The term ‘life long friend’ often gets tossed around like chaff in the wind, but with the two of us, nothing else fitted.
From the time our paths first crossed at the local Wednesday night Scout troop, our lives’ journeys just seemed to intertwine. In school classes, moving in the same social circles, both avid, non participating sports fanatics and – without doubt most significantly – a pair of political junkies.
It’s amazing the thoughts which come flooding back at a time like this. Looking back, Damien was, I think, always destined for a life in public service. His late father Paddy – a treasured friend to so many of us – was the finest wood worker I or many ever came across. A man known for his crafting of hurls, the picnic furniture which adorns several businesses around the area serve as his eternal legacy.
Damien’s mother, Phil – a member of the highly successful and respected Barton family from Maynooth – meanwhile worked serving the public in our local Credit Union for many years.
Even besides the above, however, I always think the battles we face and overcome in life are what shape us going forward. Being not much more than a teenager when Paddy passed away, fate had it that he would have to take on a mantle not many of his age would want or be able to.
Yet in many ways I think politics was a calling for him more than anything else. Noel Leonard and so many of the other senior figures within the local Fianna Fail Cumann were so taken by his genuine interest in what they were about, his commitment to and willingness to work towards the betterment of the community and those in it that very quickly it became apparent that they were taking their collective lead from him rather than the other way around.
That included myaelf. At the time of the 1999 Local Elections, Noel very much took me under his wing, but his persuasive efforts to get me to a Cumann meeting initially faltered, owing to my fear that I would be the youngest one there by several decades!
Eventually, it was Damien – two years younger than me – who cajolled me to go along with him. At which point I was very pleasantly surprised to observe the presence of plenty of people of my own vintage!
Both of us worked together canvassing for Noel and though the candidate was accused at the time of “Bringing the lad in the wheelchair out for the sympathy vote” the occupant of this seat was there very much of my own volition. As would again be the case when Noel was eventually elected in 2004 and again when Damo went for his maiden lap ten years thereafter.
Now, I told him the following at the time, so please don’t be too aghast. My only reservation about him running for election that first time was solely down to knowledge that Noel was also running and there’s nothing I dread more in life than acrimony or confrontation of any sort.
However, there needn’t have been any worries on that score as both men were community men striving for betterment of the area above all else. The photo of them both sitting at the counter in Mulvany’s during that period becomes even more poignantly treasured now.
What can one say about Damo the politician? Not since Dermot Morgan was cast as Fr Ted and/or Fr Trendy was a person more perfectly suited to a role than he has been for the past decade.
Whilst with futility trying to come to terms with the earthquake which has destroyed our world in recent days, aside from the obvlously incalculable loss which will be felt by his fiancee Lisa, their family Kyle and Carly, his mother Phil, large extended family on both sides and enormous circle of friends in which I was greatly honoured to number, the greatest heartache, personally speaking, keeps going back to what might have been.
With the Meath East constituency having been allocated an extra seat in the recent redrawing of the electoral boundaries, he would have been an absolute shoo-in to take a Dail seat at the next General Election. If he wanted it.
But you know, with the man in question, it would’ve been no surprise to me if he passed it up to stay working at local level. In years to come, if trying to entice young people into politics, there could be no greater template with which to entice them than Damien. He should, and by those of us who mourn his loss so will be remembered as the greatest politician ever seen at local level.
You often hear it said about people wearing their heart on their sleeve. Well, Cllr Damien O’Reilly carried his role as community advocate in his heart and it, in turn, on his sleeve.
In his tragically short political career he had broken down barriers and achieved things which would once have been considered unthinkable for generations. Chief among them, garnering votes for Fianna Fail from folk whose relatives would – for generations – have been otherwise inclined. And who, if they thought anyone belonging to them had voted for the green corner, would be spinning in their grave.
Even some people whose ancestors were central to the foundation of the State, being sidekicks of the man about whom Johnny McEvoy sings a beautiful ballad. While another individual of quite considerable profile – whom I won’t name – said to him “Get yourself in on GAA committees, it will get your name ‘out there’.
