Dick Spring

Everybody wanted to hear Vincent Brown talk about Charles Hawhey.

Dick Spring did the opening remarks.

Then Vincent spoke about the good and the bad and the ugly of C.J. Hawhey.

And one of the good things he did was...

But walking in there, it was like walking into...

A history book.

You know, there was Dick Spring, Vincent Brown, Eamon McCann.

And all of these faces you half recognise from seven days in primetime and news over the years.

I got involved in that, and I remember meeting Charlie Bird back in 1994 outside government buildings, and it, it just looked like such fun.

I think the then coalition was collapsing, uh, between Fianna Fáil and Labour, uh, and Dick Spring was there and what have you, and it just looked really exciting.

And you said, "I want that job."

And I thought that would be cool.

Well, just to finish with, um, a couple of allusions.

I mean, the first is a, a quotation which was used a few times in the mid-'90s in, in speeches, and, and I know because I came across it myself and, um, put it into a speech for Dick Spring.

It was a quotation from a French intellectual who said that, "We have lost our taste for prophecies, but we must not forget the duty of hope." And I think you would both agree on the duty of hope.

Mm-hmm.