Wife of the late Emmet Stagg delivers moving eulogy at former Labour minister’s funeral

Mr Stagg died peacefully at St Brigid’s Hospice in the Curragh, on St Patrick’s Day, following an illness. His Funeral Mass took place on Thursday in St Brigid’s Church, Straffan.

Chief mourners were his wife Mary, son Henry, daughter Gillian, daughter-in-law Niamh, son-in-law Ken, his granddaughters Nessa and Cara, his brothers Sean and George, sisters Maureen, Brid, Siobhan and Martha, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, cousins and a wide circle of friends.

Commandant Deirdre Newell represented the President Michael D Higgins, who was a long-time friend of Mr Stagg’s in the Labour Party. A large number of mourners travelled from Mayo, Mr Stagg’s native county, to pay their respects.

Mary Stagg delivered a moving eulogy to her late husband, they had been married for 55 years.

Emmet was born in October 1944, into a staunchly Fianna Fáil family. “They had a wholesomeness and a deep Irish culture,” said Mary. “They were all instilled with a strong work ethic. His mother, a lovely woman, vigorously promoted book learning. Emmet didn’t like school and when he scraped through his Leaving Cert, he was told to go up to Dublin and get a job.

“He tried everything to stay at home, and he often told me he would have liked to have done market gardening. Eventually, he found a position in the Department of Social Medicine in Trinity.

“But before he could accept the position in Trinity, he had to get permission from the Archbishop to work in a Protestant environment. Every minute of that interview was ingrained in his memory. How things have changed,” said Mary.

Emmet lived in a Trinity boarding house in Rathmines, and he saw every film that came to the famous Stella Cinema. At this time he also found and joined a forum discussion group in Buswells Hotel. “It’s there he found his socialism.”

Mary said she joined the same apartment two years later, and when he found out where she lived at the Liffey, “he invited himself down for a chat.”

“To endear himself to my mother, every week he brought the same chocolate cake. We were absolutely fed up with it,” remembered Mary fondly. “Anyway, the fishing worked and we got married in 1968. We settled here in our lovely village.”

Emmet set about forming a residents group in Straffan. It grew and small things got done, but it was the social aspect of the group that flourished.

“Every year, we had a bus tour. You have to remember that this was in the 60s. A day out with fun, food, and refreshments to far flung exotic places like Arklow.”

It was also at this time that Emmet became involved in the local Labour Party branch. “I have to put up my hand and say I pushed him into it,” said Mary. “So I’m responsible for all the years that followed on.”

“He was very proud of his record in building social and affordable housing. He was a strong advocate for a direct labour building programme. He later became Minister of State in Energy and Communications.”

Emmet was a “hard task master” and he expected people to work as hard as he did. “But no matter what he did, or where he was, he always tried to make it back to Straffan for his two pints of Guinness and a Black Bushmills.

“He adopted Kildare as his home but he was always a Mayo man at heart. To this day, the white flag of Kildare and the green and red of Mayo, are wrapped behind the door in the office. Neither of them get many outings.”

They would spend time in Mayo every year, and Emmet was “like a child” waiting to go holidaying at Lough Carra with his good friend Joe Conroy.

“He taught myself and Gillian and Henry to fish. Gillian gave up when she got pleurisy one very wet summer. But Henry stuck at it, and I suppose we could nearly call him an expert fly tyer at this stage.”

Mary remembered accompanying Emmet out in their little boat on Lough Carra many times over the years, filling the freezers back in Straffan with the fish they caught. “Apart from fishing, his big hobby was gardening, and he sowed every inch of our back garden.”

When Covid struck, they spent the lockdown together at home. “Just the two of us. We were both avid readers, and we spent most of the lockdown in the garden or inside, with a cup of tea and a book. We bought online, and read 82 books during the pandemic. Some days we hardly spoke a word to each other.”

“Emmet believed in his Labour principles and he fought hard for them, but he never asked a person who sought his help what their political affiliation was, and he would do his very best, even on a hopeless case. He had detailed knowledge of the planning laws, and it was amazing the people who sought him out.”

When he was ‘sacked’ as he called it, losing his seat, Emmet was at home, every day, surrounded by boxes and files that piled up in the house. “It wasn’t always a bed of roses. He valued my opinion and I appreciated that,” said Mary.

Mary thanked all those who called for sent messages of support, her neighbours and friends, and the President. “We wish Michael D a full recovery to full health. They go back many decades and they were the best of pals.”

“Emmet bore his illness stoically, and only gave us two requests. One, to Henry before Christmas, when we thought he wasn’t going to make it: a grave with a view.

“And one more recently to me: no wicker coffin. When I asked why, he said in his own mischievous way, ‘because when I wake up, I don’t want to be able to see out’”.