The late Martin Mansergh took potentially career-ending risks with his involvement in behind-the-scenes talks that led to the Northern Ireland peace process, mourners at his funeral have been told.
Daniel Mansergh said that in the late 1980s, his father, then a political adviser, had persuaded then-taoiseach Charles Haughey, in contravention of the Government’s official policy of not talking to paramilitaries, that contacts with the IRA could be worthwhile.
It was understood, however, that if the initiative “went wrong” and became a public “scandal”, he would be on his own. To the IRA, he was “an authorised representative of the Irish Government”. But if talks broke down, this could be denied and he might pay a heavy price in career and reputation.
“A lesser person would have struggled to deal with that burden,” Daniel Mansergh said. His father was prepared to persist, through difficult times, because his “optimism was basically unbounded in everything”.
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This sometime meant a certain naivete about the dangers: “Dad was always a great public transport man. Martin McGuinness was one of those who tried to persuade him that catching the train to secret meetings in Belfast was just not sensible from a security point of view,” he said.
Daniel Mansergh added that his father was “unambiguously republican”. But being descended from a long line of Anglo-Irish ancestors, who had made a political transition over three generations, helped him empathise with the island’s other tradition:
“More than most in the Irish government, he also had an understanding of unionism. I do know that there were times when not all the unionist negotiators that he was facing would have accepted that. I think it was true nonetheless.”
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Remembering the family man, Alice Mansergh said her father was a lifelong enthusiast of print journalism: “You always knew where Dad was in the house because there was the soft sound of rustling newspapers”.
The first sounds in the house every day, however, were of radio: RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, and her parents discussing the day’s news “at 7am”.
The departed’s sense of humour was a running theme in tributes. Alice Mansergh added: “His laugh was as full of joy whether he was making the joke or taking the joke. A fellow TD who’d had words with him said ‘You don’t take offence easily do you?’ Dad said, ‘I choose not to’.”
She also told mourners that her father had been working in recent times on a personal and family memoir, going back centuries. “He had just reached the point of the book where he was about to be born,” she said. But he had already written the best account of his life “by living it”.
In a funeral reflection, the Bishop of Cashel, Ferns, and Ossory, Rev Adrian Wilkinson, quoted WB Yeats’s doom-laden line from The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Martin Mansergh’s life and career had argued otherwise, he suggested.
Chief celebrant at the service in St Mary’s Church was the Dean of Cashel, James Mulhall. Tributes were also paid by grandchildren of the deceased: Charlotte Wride, and Tadhg Kennedy. The closing music was Handel’s Largo, which the Dean said had been “very dear to Martin’s heart”.
Politicians present included Taoiseach Micheál Martin and former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who shook hands and chatted briefly outside. In attendance too was former Labour leader Brendan Howlin and former Fine Gael TD Mary Flaherty, both of whom had been among the group of former parliamentarians on a trip to Morocco last month when Mr Mansergh died from a series of heart attacks.
The Moroccan Ambassador to Ireland, Dr Lahcen Mahraoui, was present at the funeral, as was former SDLP leader Mark Durkan. Other mourners included Seán Haughey, James Bannon, Pat Breen, Ned O’Keeffe, Neil O’Donovan, and the chairman of Tipperary County Council, John Carroll. The journalists Vincent Browne, Kevin Myers and Tim Ryan also attended.
