Former EU official and top diplomat dies in Brussels

THE DEATH has occurred in Brussels of Eamonn Gallagher (82), formerly one of Ireland’s most senior EU officials and diplomats, and who played a key role in the early years of Ireland’s membership of the then-EEC. He died of cancer at home after a short illness.

In the 1970s Gallagher, as director general of fisheries, the first Irishman to head one of the European Commissions departments, was one of the architects of the controversial Common Fisheries Policy.

In the earlier years of the decade as head of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ newly-created Anglo-Irish Division he travelled extensively to the North where he established a wide range of influential contacts, and was central to the development of the Government’s response to the Northern crisis.

Gallagher became head of the EU division and a deputy secretary of the department, moving to Brussels in 1976 after a successful first Irish presidency of the EEC when he had attracted the attention of the external relations commissioner, Sir Christopher Soames, as a tough but successful negotiator.

After a brief period with Soames, he was asked by commission president Jacques Delors to establish and run the commission’s fisheries directorate.

He later served as a special adviser to Delors and EU representative to the UN in New York, and in retirement would be brought back by the then-minister for finance, Ruairí Quinn, to help the 1996 Irish presidency broker a compromise in a dispute over the multi-billion euro Trans European Networks programme.

In 1992-93 he served on the independent citizens’ inquiry into the political options for the North, the Opsahl Commission.

An active member of the Institute for European Affairs in Brussels, he and another Irish former commission official, John Temple Lang, co-authored an influential pamphlet on the democratic rationale for the EU’s institutional balance. Both men recently argued and lobbied against the Lisbon Treaty, specifically against the loss of a permanent commission seat, but also what they saw as the increasing power of the Council of Ministers to the detriment of small member-states.

Born on July 13th, 1926 in Glasgow to Donegal parents, he had four brothers and five sisters. The family returned to live near Letterkenny.

A passionate golfer, he also loved paintings and poker, and was a strong supporter of the Scottish National Party.

He is survived by his partner of more than three decades Nora O’Brien, his estranged wife Dorothy Kelley, and three daughters.