Anna Spring laid to rest in Tralee

A political era came to an end yesterday when Mrs Anna Spring was buried in Tralee following one of Kerry's biggest funerals in recent years. Mrs Spring (78) - mother of the Labour Party leader, Mr Dick Spring, and widow of Dan Spring, TD for Kerry North from 1943 to 1981 - was hugely influential in the local party organisation for almost 50 years. She knew the constituency intimately and could read local and national trends over several general elections.

She was buried at Rath cemetery after concelebrated requiem Mass in St John's Church, where the chief celebrant, the Dean of Kerry, Monsignor Dan O'Riordan, praised her service to the community.

For more than three hours on Saturday, hundreds of people queued to pay their respects at Hogan's funeral parlour before the removal to the church.

Mrs Spring was the daughter of a small farmer in Kilflynn in north Kerry and trained as a nurse after secondary school as a boarder in Mount Sackville in Dublin. She married Dan Spring in 1944 and they had three sons and three daughters. In the maledominated political world of prefeminist Ireland, she was an independent-minded and shrewd tactician immersed in the daily routine of politics.

"She was," said Fianna Fail TD for Kerry North Mr Denis Foley, "an outstanding political programme manager long before the position was invented. Her contribution to the Labour Party is incalculable."

Chief mourners were Mr Dick Spring, his brothers Arthur and Donal, and his sisters Catherine, Maeve and Noelle. Among those who attended the removal and funeral were the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern; the Tanaiste, Ms Harney; the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton; the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume; the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad, Mr Liam Cosgrave; Labour's Mr Ruairi Quinn TD, Ms Breda Moynihan-Cronin TD, Mr Michael D. Higgins TD, Mr Brendan Howlin TD, Mr Emmet Stagg TD and Mr Mervyn Taylor; the Fianna Fail Munster MEP, Mr Gerard Collins; the Fine Gael TD for Limerick West, Mr Michael Finucane, Mr Spring's fellow North Kerry TDs, Mr Foley and Mr Jim Deenihan (FG), and the president of SIPTU, Mr Jimmy Somers.