GERRY Jones who died on October 21st, was a familiar presence at the shoulders of controversial politicians during some of the most critical events of the 1970s.
Politics was one of the recreations listed by this successful businessman who had left Bandon for Dublin to join the Civil Service in 1937 and, in 1950, embarked on a second, commercial career.
This led to the formation of the Jones Group, a conglomerate largely engaged in shipping and engineering, in which he shared control with his brothers John and Chris.
At its busiest the group employed 3,000. But, to anyone who knew him, it was clear that, for Gerry Jones, who was a member of Fianna Fail's national executive in the 1960s, politics was not so much a recreation as an obsession.
He cut a stately figure as he strolled through the Dail restaurant or surveyed from a height the comings and goings at ard-fheiseanna while arguments about what came to be known as the arms crisis raged around him.
But, even disguised by an appearance of lofty remoteness or by the soft tones of west Cork, the passionate intensity of his views on Northern affairs - or the national question - was unmistakable .
He was one of Neil Blaney's most implacable supporters, especially when the Donegal man challenged the conciliatory policies of Jack Lynch in a series of hostile speeches, the most vigorous of which were delivered in Tralee and Letterkenny.
He stood by Blaney when he was dismissed from the Cabinet by Lynch and arrested on a charge of conspiring to import arms. (A District Court was to decide that Blaney did not have a case to answer.)
Gerry Jones was clearly one of the "fellow patriots" to whom Charles Haughey appealed when he, in turn, left the Four Courts, acquitted by a jury of the same charge.
In the years that followed, during which Blaney was expelled from Fianna Fail and Haughey toured every constituency in the State to drum up support for his own leadership ambitions, Gerry Jones remained - as he was once described in court - Blaney's shadow.
Even in 1984, when he was chosen to deliver a commemorative speech at the scene of Tom Barry's Kilmichael ambush, he reached for the ideas and language of the 1970s: he called for an end to extradition, the Army's withdrawal from the Border and Garret FitzGerald's resignation.
Gerry Jones had been a member of the board of Irish Shipping during the 1960s but, in 1971, was not re-appointed by George Colley - a decision which disappointed him but was scarcely a surprise.
As one of a group of businessmen who had supported the Haughey-Blaney wing of the party - on domestic as well as on Northern issues - he was bound to be disillusioned by the changes of government in 1973 and again in 1982.
But, by the middle of the 1980s he had decided to make his home in London. In another change of direction at the age of 65, he enrolled as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. Gerry Jones is survived by his wife Breeda, his partner Mary and four children.
Gerry Jones: born 1919; died October, 1999