Sean Gerard Ronan, who died on February 27th aged 76, played a significant role in the formation of an interventionist Dublin policy on Northern Ireland as the reformist O'Neill government was challenged on the streets of Derry and Belfast in 1969.
But it is as an energetic diplomat, bon viveur and "a very strong person" with a worldwide spread of cultural interests - a Corkman who liked the walk up Mount Fuji - that he will be affectionately remembered.
As assistant secretary at the Department of External Affairs, he urged in 1969 that unity should be sought by consent.
In a memo - which was recently released to the public - he summed up Irish diplomats' proposals on how to proceed in the unexpected new emergency. "The use of force, emotionalism, and opportunism must be proscribed. Our approach must be sincere, realistic, logical, pragmatic and unrelenting at all times." Long-term policy should be based on a federal solution, he insisted. The department's secretary, Hugh McCann, had proposed a special section to co-ordinate Northern policy, and Sean Ronan became its chairman. That was the genesis of the present day Anglo-Irish division of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
A career diplomat known informally in the service as "Sean G", he was Ireland's first ambassador to Greece and most of his career was spent representing the State abroad. A then junior colleague recalls him as a "very forthcoming," friendly man who took enormous interest in whatever tasks he was involved.
Among them were postings as ambassador to Bonn and Tokyo, where he formed an abiding affection for Japanese culture. A speaker of French and German, he loved the arts and was an active member of the United Arts Club and the Ireland Japan Association.
For four years, until 1977, he was the Republic's top-ranking Eurocrat as director general of information for the European Commission. This position was "terminated" when the British Labour figure, Roy Jenkins, as incoming president of the Commission, determined controversially to take the press and information divisions under his own control.
Jenkins amalgamated the functions of porte parole (to the media) and information (to interest groups) apparently without any intended reflection on the ability of Sean Ronan, who was within days asked to be a special adviser on information policy.
As director of information he had stressed that the Community was not out to swamp national identities. An Irish speaker, he instanced the EEC's financial help to the Gaeltachts. But he was alert to the perception among EEC citizens of the Brussels labyrinth as remote, intangible and bureaucratic.
Governments had to show there was a true European community and not just "a community of merchants".
He returned to the Department of Foreign Affairs as a deputy secretary and was soon appointed to Athens.
Born in Cork city on January 11th, 1924, Sean Ronan was educated at the Capuchin Franciscan College at Rochestown, Co Cork, at Presentation Brothers College, Cork and at UCD, where he graduated with a BA in legal and political science, an MA and an LL.B. At college he was a one-mile champion and excelled at Gaelic games. He also played rugby and golf.
He started in the Civil Service in the early 1940s in Revenue. Next came the Department of Finance, then a posting to the Department of External Affairs in 1949 as a third secretary. In the 1950s he served as consul in New York and Chicago, where he formed a close relationship with Mayor Daley.
As assistant secretary he headed the department's political and cultural sections from 1964 until his 1972 appointment as ambassador to Bonn.
He had responsibility for UN relations, and worked particularly well with his minister, Frank Aiken. He became deeply involved in his role on the UN's disarmament committee.
Under his cultural watch, commissioning of the award-winning Paddy Carey film Yeats Country was a watershed in Irish filmmaking.
He was among a group of senior diplomats who went, in 1965, to Pentonville Prison to identify the remains of Roger Casement, which were being returned to Ireland by the Harold Wilson government.
He thought of Casement as "the first human rights activist of the 20th century".
In 1984 he moved from Athens to become ambassador to Tokyo (with accreditation to Seoul) serving there until retirement in 1989. In recent years he pursued his interest in Asia, including a passion for the 19th century Anglo-Irish-Greek writer, Lafcadio Hearn, known as the first Westerner to become Japanese.
Sean Ronan wrote several publications on the Japanese language-chronicler. Among many other knowledge-based passions were ones for Bram Stoker, Joyce, and the Co Clare submarine maker, John Philip Holland.
Sean Ronan is survived by his wife Brigid, daughters Deirdre, Maeve and Emer, his sister Marie and brother Finbarr.
He was predeceased by a son, Niall.
Sean G. Ronan: born 1924; died February, 2000