I first came to know the late Micheal O hAodha back in the 1940s when, as a travelling customs officer, I spent hours writing plays for Radio Eireann.

He was assistant then to John McDonagh, head of radio drama at the time, but already had made his mark in the theatre when he had his first full play in Irish, Ordog an Bhais, produced to much deserved acclaim at the Abbey.

Shortly afterwards, in 1945, he was to set off scores of Abbey pantomimes - also in Irish - by writing the very first one, Muireann agus an Prionsa.

When Radio Eireann broadened the scope of its programmes after the war, he helped form the first resident RTE Repertory Company of players, and became their senior producer. He was a gifted producer, sensitive and inventive, especially in Irish plays. He became head of drama and presided over its best years with regular productions of Synge, O'Casey, Molloy and the discovery of many young writers eager to experiment with the theatre of the microphone, both in English and Irish.

His knowledge of plays and playwrights was truly encyclopaedic, and he was an expert historian of the early Abbey years, particularly the Abbey's forerunner, the Irish Literary Theatre. So it was not unexpected that he was appointed to the first body of shareholders, formed just before the new Abbey building opened in 1966.

When Walter Macken resigned, he found himself that same year appointed in his place as Government representative on the board and, in due course, the dedicated and quietly assuring chairman, guiding us all with good sense and an abundance of patience through some unsettling times. I certainly valued his counsel during those ever recurring controversies of which the Abbey, old and new, never seems to free itself.

I recall that it was with Micheal's firm support that I managed to put on Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, somewhat in defiance of the rest of the then board, who were anything but enthusiastic. But then it was he who first discovered Behan, adding his rumbustious ballads to Radio Eireann's Ballad Makers' Saturday Night.

He was indeed a man of many talents, what in Irish might be called an Ildanai, both scholar and master as one. On his retirement to his beloved cottage amid the Kerry hills, he gave us a most intriguing - and rewarding - biography of the late Micheal Mac Liammoir, followed by an equally intriguing one on the actress Siobhan McKenna.

When he died he was working on his memoirs and hopefully, in due course, they will be published. As a friend and comrade in arts I shall certainly miss him, as so many of us will, and his wry sense of humour, his quiet demeanour, his reminiscences of plays and players past and gone. Ar dheis Dhe go raibh se i sonas na siorraiochta.