Mentor and visionary Joe Walsh laid to rest

Joe Walsh, the former agriculture minister who was acclaimed as being equally at home in the parish hall or in the gilded buildings of Brussels, was laid to rest yesterday.

The occasion, prompted by his death on Sunday at the age of 71 following an illness, drew a flock of Fianna Fáil faces past and present to Clonakilty in West Cork, with mourners told: “History will judge Joe extremely kindly.”

The funeral Mass was a veritable who’s who of recent political life, particularly the Fianna Fáil strand which Mr Walsh served with in Dáil Éireann from 1977 to 2007, during which time he also became Europe’s longest-serving agriculture minister.