Jimmy O’Mahony – senior civil servant who smoothed Ireland’s path into EEC

For someone whose work had a considerable impact on the nation's economic life, Jimmy O'Mahony, who has died aged 90, remained very much below the radar of Irish media.

Secretary (or, as the position is now called, secretary general) of the Department of Agriculture for 11 years from 1977, O’Mahony had the difficult task of overseeing many deeply unpopular reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy during that period, changes which had a substantial effect on farm incomes.

These, between 1978 and 1981, declined by about 40 per cent, while farming was also adversely affected by high interest rates which particularly hit farmers who had taken out loans to buy land or machinery during the initial, boom-time period of European Economic Community membership which had seen prices soar after 1972.

The changes, especially after 1978, included the introduction of the milk super-levy, milk quotas, the intervention system, which led to the infamous beef mountains and wine lakes, and a whole raft of new regulations laying down strict standards, for instance in animal and plant health, which entailed extensive new administrative work for Irish farmers.

Adept negotiator

But O’Mahony and his colleagues at the department proved adept negotiators, and crucial concessions were extracted from Brussels. These included a derogation from the 1984 milk market reforms, allowing Ireland to keep production at 1983 levels plus 5 per cent, and the unilateral “green pound” devaluation in 1986, which led to increases in income for Irish farmers of an average of 25 per cent, with dairy seeing a rise of 70 per cent over the next few years.

In a tribute in the Farmers Journal last month, former Royal Dublin Society president Austin Mescal wrote that "the negotiating of Ireland's public servants was crucial in difficult circumstances, and O'Mahony and his team earned the respect of both the Brussels officials and negotiators from other countries".

He had also, earlier in his career, played a vital role in preparing Ireland’s agriculture for the challenges of free trade and EU entry.

In the early 1960s, he was sent as agricultural attache to the Irish embassy in London, prior to the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement of 1965. In the later 1960s, he was one of a small interdepartmental group of top civil servants which worked on the white paper Membership of the European Communities: Implications for Ireland, published in April 1970. These men became the core of the negotiating team which eventually delivered agreement with Brussels on the terms of Ireland's entry to the EEC.

Jimmy O’Mahony was the only child of Bartholomew O’Mahony, from a farming and milling family, and his wife, Molly, of Brinney, near Upton in Co Cork. He won a scholarship to the diocesan college at Farranferris, where he was an outstanding student.

He and his schoolfriend Paddy Whooley both joined the Civil Service, the former also becoming in time a departmental secretary, in fisheries and forestry.

Whooley recalls that though O’Mahony joined at a very junior level as a clerical officer, he was soon promoted and after that “shot up through the ranks”.

Marketing

An important career milestone was his appointment as secretary to the new marketing committee in the department in 1948. This was the first time, Whooley believes, any attempt had been made since independence at organising a marketing policy for Irish agriculture.

O’Mahony’s mother died when he was a child, and he is survived by two half-brothers from his father’s second marriage, and by his children, Brian, Mary and Paul. His wife, Pat, (née Hayes) a former Civil Service colleague, predeceased him in the past year.