Patrick Conaty Sr., RIP
I was truly saddened to learn of the death of Paddy Conaty. With his passing one more of the giants of Cavan politics has departed this mortal stage.
Paddy came from a long nationalist and republican tradition. He served as a councillor, both at Urban and County Council level, for over thirty years. In that time he showed himself to be his own man, the lacky of neither faction nor creed. Two qualities I recall with pleasure were his candour combined with his boundless warmth.
Paddy was never slow to turn down an argument. I remember once observing a fresh and frank exchange of views between Paddy and a fellow member of the Fianna Fail party, who was also known to belong to a shadowy ultra-conservative religious lay group. The spectrum of beliefs I observed was truly fascinating and I went up to the two of them afterward, (who, naturally remained the strongest of friends in spit4 of the warmth with which their beliefs had been expressed) and said to them: “No one would realise that the two of you belonged to the same party. They’d put you down for a life-long Labour man and as for you they’d say you must be a PDer.”
At this moment Paddy is probably rubbing shoulders with some of the other political colossi from Cavan who have been promoted to a better place in the recent past. One of them may be a small over-heated upstairs room of some hostelry choked with cigarette smoke. The other might be the slightly more august, though no less pokey hall in which Cavan’s urban affairs were discussed at length. All I hope is there isn’t a staircase nearby!
I express my sympathies to Pat, Charles, John, Noel - indeed to all his family – on their irreperable loss. Paddy had lost his dear wife of many years, Kathleen, on the same day as my mother died.
