Eoin Ryan (MEP)

Grandson of James Ryan

Eoin Ryan

“He was always incredibly respectful and honoured to be a member of the Dáil – I suppose because they literally fought for it. We were always brought up with the thought that the Dáil wasn’t something that was always there.

“Because of where they came from they saw that just getting independence was not an end in itself, that we needed economic independence as well.

“He was quite a radical person in many ways. He was very pro-European. He really believed our relationship with other countries in Europe was very important to us. He saw our economic reliance on Britain was not sustainable.

“Not that he had a big hang-up about Britain or anything. I suppose he did in the sense that they had him in prison and so on, but I never heard him thunder and roar about England. A lot of them were more interested in building a new Ireland than looking at the past. Sometimes stories would come up about 1916, the GPO, being in prison, but I think most of the time it was the challenges facing the country.

“We spent time as kids in his home. They lived on a farm in Wicklow. He enjoyed the farm, he enjoyed the land. He put a lot of work into it and he had a great touch for gardening.

“He was a tall man, quite an imposing character. He was a very pleasant, easy-going person. I think maybe once or twice I saw him getting angry, certainly not with us. He wasn’t a man that wanted you to be in awe of him.

“When we were staying over at night we would all sit around and I remember when the TV arrived he never watched it. He’d look into the fire. He preferred to listen rather than watch. It’s a generational thing. I vividly remember that I couldn’t believe he wasn’t watching the TV.

“He went to America on a visit and when he came back he was completely hooked on coffee. When we woke up in the morning there was the smell of coffee in the house. He’d read his papers before going into Dublin and he’d have a big pot of coffee. The strong smell of coffee always used to remind me of him.

“They lived very differently. The day-to-day pressure on politicians wouldn’t have been as much. There was one telephone. It was a wind-up phone. It was fairly basic communications for a lot of the time. At the table politics was talked about the whole time. People would be passionate about it. My grandmother was very passionate about it.

“When he was minister for finance he put tax on drink and cigarettes. They had a photo of him drinking and smoking and my grandmother was absolutely horrified that the press could print such a thing!

“He died in September 1970. I would have been 16.” – Mary Minihan