The congregation at the funeral Mass for Ray Dooley (54), former chief executive at Children's Rights Alliance, was told yesterday that he left an enormous "moral and social inheritance".
Former US congressman Joe Kennedy, who delivered the eulogy at the "Mass of Thanksgiving for the life of Ray Dooley" in the Church of the Assumption, Howth, Co Dublin, said he was a kind man "whose moral and social inheritance is so enormous".
Mr Dooley, who died of cancer at his home in Howth last Sunday, was chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance until 2004. A native of Baltimore in the US, he worked for former Boston mayor Ray Flynn and was chief of staff for former congressman Kennedy.
He was chief operating officer in Boston from 1984 until 1990 and held a variety of other consultative and public positions in the city dating back to the early 1970s.
With Mr Kennedy in 1998 he set up the non-profit Citizens Energy corporation which provides low-cost fuel to poor people.
Six years ago he and his wife Anne Rowland, who is Irish, returned with their children to live in Howth, where they had married.
Chief mourners were: Anne Rowland and their children Catriona, Conor, and Brian. The Taoiseach was represented by Comdt Michael Murray.
The large attendance included: Jillian van Turnhout, Ann Quinn, Teresa Blake, and Sr Margaret Burns of Children's Rights Alliance, Paul Gilligan and Grace Kelly of the ISPCC, Sophie McGennis of the Children's Ombudsman's office, Sr Joan Roddy of the Irish Bishops' Refugee Project, Helen Johnston of Combat Poverty, and Labour TD Joe Costello.
Mr Dooley was buried last night at Bofeenaun cemetery near Pontoon in Co Mayo.