LOUIS SMITH: Prof Louis Smith was an economist and lecturer who also played a key role in the co-operative movement, and in establishing the National Farmers' Association, which later became the IFA.
Others will remember him as a committed European and a founder member of European Movement Ireland.
The youngest of eight children, Louis Smith was born in Crossdoney, Co Cavan to Isabel and Dr Frederick Smith in December 1923. He was educated in Clongowes Wood College and studied economics and history in UCD and law in King’s Inns.
In 1950 he began working with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society as an organiser of co-operatives. His daughter Isabel Smith recalled how he travelled the country in his black Austen car to promote the formation of co-ops to farmers who were initially suspicious of “the tall man from Dublin”.
When she began working as a vet, she found that farmers remembered her father wherever she went. “He was the man from Dublin but the word was always that he had a great knack of bringing the crowd with him and of talking sound sense.” In 1954, Macra na Feirme recruited him as an economic adviser, to help develop policy for the National Farmers’ Association which would be set up six months later, in January, 1955. He was the third person to be employed by the NFA in Earlsfort Terrace .
IFA president John Bryan said Smith played a central role in establishing the committee structure which remains a key strength of the organisation. “His input to the development of what is now the IFA was significant in establishing a strong voice for Irish farmers,” Mr Bryan said. “As one of those involved in the early days, his contribution was very important.”
He initially combined this work with lecturing in UCD’s department of political economy before leaving the NFA, and eventually becoming emeritus professor of economics (international trade). Former colleagues remembered a teacher who was enthusiastic, sometimes impenetrable, sometimes absent-minded, but always very engaging. He took a great interest in his students and was known to slow down at bus stops on the way from Belfield, to offer students a lift into town.
He retained his interest in all things agricultural and in the 1960s and early 1970s he wrote a column in the Irish Independent, under the pen name Agricola, which is the Latin word for farmer.
Smith was one of the seven original signatories of the articles of association that founded the Irish Council of the European Movement in 1954. Other signatories included Dr Garret FitzGerald and George Colley.
He was a founding president of the Ireland India Council and was chairman of the Irish Council for Overseas Students.
He also found time for writing and was the author of Evolution of Agricultural Co-operation in 1961 and co-author of Elementary Economics in 1963; Milk to Market – A History of Dublin Milk Supply in 1989; and Farm Organisations in Ireland – A Century of Progress in 1996.
He played tennis at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club until his mid-80s and switched to snooker and swimming when he had to forego the racket. He was a keen sailor and later boated on the Shannon in his barge which he had carefully restored in 1978.
Smith was also a member of the Christian Family Movement for 40 years.
His family spoke of his “huge social conscience” and recalled that he was a regular contributor to the letters page of The Irish Times. In March 1987 he wrote to “applaud the action of the Government in withholding the increase of 15 per cent granted to senior public servants – even though it applies to myself”.
He said the country was “spending grossly above the means of the people” and continued: “It is most irresponsible to give any public service increases from money we must borrow abroad, leaving our children to repay with interest.”
He died on November 25th, just weeks before his 89th birthday.
He was predeceased by his wife Sheila (nee Brady) in June of this year and is survived by his children Brendan, Philip, Eileen, Veronica, Isabel and Myles, his 11 grandchildren and brother Neil.