Donal Creed, long-time Fine Gael TD for the constituencies of Mid Cork and Cork North West, has died aged 93. Despite his long, successful and varied career in politics, including a term in the European Parliament, his daughter was able to describe him at his funeral as “always at heart a farmer”.

He ran a successful dairy farm at Codrum, Macroom.

A perusal of Dáil debates over his 24-year parliamentary career testifies to his continuing interest in farming and the Irish food industry.

He tabled numerous questions about milk prices, pigmeat prices and the poultry industry. In 1966, he pursued the then minister for agriculture for allowing a bad relationship to develop with farming organisations. In 1971, he asked a pointed question about the changes in cattle breeding policy that would be needed to serve continental markets. In 1972, he raised the issue of antibiotic residues in meat, a matter that has again become topical.

His values were well summed up in his contribution to the debate on the 1980 budget, when he reminded his colleagues that there needed to be “an incentive to work, and an incentive to save” and when he said that , when it comes to state services, “nothing is free, somebody is paying for it”.

When I first entered the Dáil in 1969, Donal was the Fine Gael spokesman on agriculture on Liam Cosgrave’s front bench and continued in that capacity until 1971.

He was a highly credible spokesman. I was secretary of the party’s agriculture committee at the time, and I learned much from him. He was generous with his help when I took over the Agriculture portfolio.

Donal had been educated at the De La Salle College in Macroom, and later in UCC, where he obtained a Diploma in Rural Science and Public Administration.

His father, Michael, had been a member of Cork County Council and, when he retired, Donal was elected in his place.

He was elected to the Dáil in the 1965 general election.

He won a seat in the Mid-Cork constituency, where he had raised his profile as a byelection candidate earlier in the same year.

Increased vote

In the 1969 general election, Donal Creed was able, with an increased vote, to bring in his running mate, Phil Burton, giving his party two of the four seats in Mid Cork.

Following on that success, he was promoted to the front bench in 1969, serving as spokesman on agriculture and later on social welfare.

He was re-elected to the Dáil in 1973.

Meanwhile, Ireland had entered the European Economic Community, and Donal was chosen to represent Dáil Eireann as one of Ireland’s first MEPs, a role in which he continued until 1979.

In the 1977 election, he was again re-elected, but as the sole Fine Gael representative in a five-seat constituency.

In the election of 1981, he achieved a remarkable political triumph.

In the new three-seat constituency of Cork North West, he helped his party to win two seats out of three, bringing his Fine Gael colleague Frank Crowley into the Dáil. This involved remarkable vote management and good transfers from Labour, because Fianna Fáil, who only got one seat, actually had obtained substantially more first preferences.

As Minister for Sport in Garret FitzGerald’s government, he pioneered the creation of the National Lottery, which helped transform cultural and sporting life in Ireland and continues to do so to this day. Donal Creed’s name deserves to be remembered by all those, in virtually every parish in Ireland, who have benefitted from Lottery funds.

In the 1987 election, despite unfavourable results for Fine Gael all over Ireland, Donal Creed and Frank Crowley again won two of the three seats, again with fewer first preferences than their competitors.

Between 1987 and 1989, Donal Creed was chair of the Fine Gael parliamentary party.

He did not contest the 1989 general election and his seat was won by his son, Michael, who continued his record of electoral success.

My abiding memory of Donal Creed is of a courteous, honourable, and dedicated public servant. He was universally well liked, which was a key to his political success.