Tommy was very proud of his workmates and of his job as a train-driver. He was known among his workmates as: ‘The Senator’, ‘The Skipper’, ‘Rosie’– whatever that meant, and ‘Crash the Gates’. I dare not ask what that name referred to. He loved the fact that in his working life he had driven the full range of trains– from steam engines to diesels and, later, the electric Darts.

He also loved CIE but that didn’t stop him being a very active trade unionist, first as a member of the British and Irish Railwaymen’s union ASLEF and then of the NBRU. He was also involved in some of the very early attempts at employee participation in the running of CIE, as a worker member of the Sectional Council. When as kids we’d be looking for something to be bought, he would occasionally remind us that, in his own words, he only worked for CIE– he didn’t own it.

The only day he was ever deliberately late for work was the day of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. You might remember that the authorities in South Africa kept on delaying Mandela’s release, obviously unaware of Tommy’s great interest and the impact that this was having on the train schedules in Ireland.

Mandela was a hero of Tommy’s and during his illness he said he wanted to go to see him in South Africa. As the so-called ‘researcher’ in the family he gave me the job of finding out how he’d get there. In the last five years or so he’d taken a great interest in Africa and his imagination was especially engaged by the practical work of the charity Bóthar. He’d fleece everyone who came into the house for money to fill his big bottle. As a result of his fundraising there are a few more cattle now in Africa than before.

He was always very interested in self-help projects such as Credit Unions, the Scouts of course, and community activism of all sorts, both formal and informal, especially in Donnybrook. On the day his remains came home for the last time, his neighbour and great friend Gretta Fogarty went around all the houses on Brookvale Road and collected flowers from everyone’s garden to make a special bouquet for him. Tommy would have loved that. As Gretta said, he had helped to plant most of them.

He loved living in Donnybrook where our family came in 1955, mainly to be nearer St Brendan’s Cerebral Palsy Clinic on Sandymount Avenue for our late sister, Deirdre, who was disabled. Much later, Tommy would tease those of us who hadn’t the good fortune to live in Dublin 4, especially in Donnybrook. He loved the River Dodder and was an environmentalist long before the concept was invented. His practicality, however, also extended to the Dodder and he used to take sand out of the river for his various building projects. One neighbour used to say that he had changed the course of the river in the process of building-on all the extra rooms in his house. I once heard him say that neither his house nor his family was planned. The enlargement of one grew alongside the enlargement of the other.

Work and workmanship was what really interested Tommy. Work was the language he used to express his affection: for CIE, for his community in Donnybrook, and especially for his family. There’s a saying– I think by Thomas Merton– that ‘Work is love made visible’. I don’t know if Tommy knew the quotation, although he was a very early attender at the Workers’ College. But whether or not he knew the saying that was the philosophy he lived by all his life: Work is love made visible.

Tommy came to Dublin from Kilkenny in 1946 without very much in the way of assets, but he didn’t do too badly in the end. However, he really remained a countryman all his life. I don’t know if he did it in O’Connell Street but around Donnybrook Tommy would speak to virtually everyone he met on the roads. He was a fairly old-fashioned man and believed in old-fashioned things like neighbourliness and hospitality. His house was always open to everyone. I often say that I didn’t grow up in a house but in a Community Centre.

Of course, he wasn’t always an angel (not all the time, anyway) and there were lots of rows as well. But now after all his work, struggles and arguments, he is at peace. He was a great individualist, a very fine human being and we are very grateful for his life.