Brian Lenihan R.I.P.

I never met this man.I did however meet his late father.When we were all at home in Blanchardstown years ago and most of the eleven people living in 4 Tolka View were eligible to vote,Brian Senior often lingered to extract the vote.Which he would usually get,it must be said.He was very influential in securing the Morgan Schools grounds for St.Brigids G.A.A.Club in the early seventies as he used his influence to overcome the reverse bias then evident in the G.A.A. Club's attempts to secure the playing fields of a Protestant boarding school.
My late mother Peggy did however meet him and had reason to have recourse to him.Were she alive I would have sought her permission to relate this and I would have said nothing about his demise ,but both are now dead and I feel it only fair to give credit where it is due.
For a period after my late father's death and during a period when Fianna Fail was in Government with the now defunct P.D.s Blanchardstown was a village of elderly widows.Around this time the new motorway behind my mother's house in Tolka View had opened and this gave ready access to certain persons of low breeding to my mother's house ,which was burgled a number of times .She was one frightened lady,as were her neighbours.
Anyhow the building at the top of the lane,which formerly housed Jemmy Godley's clothes shop and A.I.B. was vacant and plans were afoot to make it into a probation service depot and a drug addddict  drop in unit.You can see that this would have inspired huge anxierty in a road of elderly widows.
Never one to lie down,my mother wrote to the relevant minister outlining her anxieties .
She told me that she got the most insulting and belittling response she ever suffered. She was so upset thar she burned it so I cannot say whether the Minister or one of his minnions wrote it  but its effect was that not only would the plans not be changed ,but that such a combination of services would enhance the lives of the residents.This is called negotiation by putting your boot on the throat of the other party.
No doubt the writer selflessly passed up the opportunity to have such a service beside his own home.Incidentally since I reverted to civil society I have found that there are pockets of the Public Service which treat ordinary people as gobshites if they think they can get away with it ,so such a reply comes as no surprise to me now.   
This is where the late Brian Lenehan came in.She contacted him,explained the position to him and the matter was resolved in a manner befitting the situation.
Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.