‘Jackie could do anything’ - The plain and the powerful pay tribute

For a man who had battled all his life, it was fitting that his last fight was the toughest and, perhaps, the most heroic.

Jackie Healy-Rae, who sprung to national prominence after being elected an independent TD against the odds in 1997 and who died in hospital last Friday, aged 83, had been ill for eight months.

Yesterday, the powerful and — more importantly to him — the so-called plain people who voted for him turned out in large numbers to bid him a final farewell in his native Kilgarvan, Co Kerry.