Pádraig MacKernan

Pádraig MacKernan (24 April 1940 – 25 January 2010) The first in his family to achieve a degree, he attended Crescent College and University College, Galway (UCG) from which he graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts in French and English and was elected Auditor (head) of the university's Literary & Debating Society in 1961. He then attended the Sorbonne and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, while also teaching at the Lycée Condorcet, earning a master's degree focussing on the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and becoming fully bilingual in French and English – he was already an Irish speaker. While a student at UCG and the Sorbonne he met fellow student Caitríona Gavin, who he subsequently married on returning to Ireland in 1963, where he taught French and English in Gorey Co Wexford.

In 1985, he was made Irish Ambassador to the United States and Mexico. and the establishment of The American Ireland Fund by merging the then American Irish Foundation and Ireland Fund. He also assisted Congressmen Brian Donnelly and Bruce Morrison, House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Senators Ted Kennedy and Alan Simpson, in a systematic campaign of advocacy that regularised the status of many undocumented Irish citizens in the United States (generally known as the "Irish Illegals"). In his capacity as Ambassador to Mexico he was involved in arranging commemoration of the service of Mexico's Irish Brigade, the Batallón de San Patricio, a role he was to reprise when he accompanied the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese in 1999 when she laid a wreath at the Battalion memorial in the course of a state visit to Mexico.

1990s and 2000s In 1991 he was appointed Irish Permanent Representative (Ambassador) to the European Union. There, as one of only two members at that time of the Committee of Permanent Representatives or COREPER, who had previously been a political director in his foreign service (and thus a former member of the EEC's political committee, where earlier multilateral amendments to the treaties had been negotiated), he was considered particularly effective in negotiating for Ireland large subventions from the EU's Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds, as well as assisting in securing funds from the Ireland Funds for the construction of the Round Tower commemorating the Irish dead of World War I at the Island of Ireland Peace Park, the dedication of which he was later to attend as Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1998.

In 1995, he was appointed Secretary General (i.e., the permanent civil service head or Permanent Secretary) of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1998, the impasse became public and received wide coverage in Irish media.

In 2001, he was made Irish Ambassador to France. As ambassador to France he attended various British commemorations for World War I and II in his official capacity. His achievements in France were recognised by the French Government when he was honoured as a Grand Officier de l'Ordre national du Mérite shortly before his retirement.

Later life and death In 2005, he retired.

In January 2010, he died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, survived by his wife Caitríona and sons Dónal, Colm and Dara. followed later by Enda Kenny, the leader of the opposition and Fine Gael, the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and other political figures in the houses of the Oireachtas. He was cremated after a humanist ceremony on 28 January 2010 and his ashes were scattered in the river at Ballynahinch, County Galway after a short ceremony.