Seaghán Ó Briain, who has died aged 92, was a pioneer in raising accommodation standards in Irish tourism.
He was one of a group of four inspectors for the recently established Irish Tourist Board who travelled around Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s trying to persuade hotels to upgrade their facilities and make them more salubrious, especially to overseas visitors.
He was also a founder-member of An Óige and an activist in the preservation of the Irish language. He was involved in setting up Scoil Lorcain, the Irish-speaking primary school in Monkstown, Co Dublin, which served as a model for later schools.
He was born in Askeaton, Co Limerick, on September 9th, 1912. His father, Jack O'Brien, was a lighthouse keeper at the time in the Shannon estuary. He was later moved to Castletownbere where Seaghán received his early education.
Later the family moved to Dún Laoghaire where he attended the Christian Brothers School and then Blackrock College. His first job was teaching shorthand and typing. He married Sorcha Donnelly, originally from New York, in 1943 and they had five children.
In 1944, he joined the recently established An Bord Cuartaíochta, or Irish Tourist Board. It was set up under the Tourist Traffic Act of 1939 brought in by the then minister for industry and commerce, Seán Lemass, to put Irish tourism on a statutory basis. All hotels were now obliged to register with the new body or lose the right to describe themselves as hotels.
Some 1,800 applications were received for four posts as inspectors of hotel accommodation and Seaghán Ó Briain was one of those selected. Their first task was to inspect each of the 1,200 premises which had registered as hotels. With the Emergency conditions of the time - trains running irregularly on turf, petrol rationing and poor roads - the inspectors endured harsh travelling experiences.
When they did reach their destinations, conditions were often as bad: damp beds with sheets changed once a week, no heating in bedrooms, unhygienic toilets and bathrooms and food rationing.
But the tourist board now had a list of all the hotels in the State and a detailed report on each one. Minimum standards could be laid down. Premises which had failed to register were not allowed to call themselves "hotels" and prosecuted if they did so.
The next step was to repeat the inspections with a view to grading the registered hotels. The hoteliers were unaware of this operation until the grades were published in 1947 and there were many protests. The inspectors were not popular.
Ó Briain later developed the idea of Irish Farmhouse Holidays and Irish Town and Country Homes. In 1971, he was named as Irish tourism's Man of the Year.
He joined the Gaelic League at an early age and was an officer of the famous Keating branch in Dublin. He was later chairman of the Blackrock branch. With Diarmuid Ó hAlmhain, he conceived the idea of an all-Irish primary school sponsored by parents in Dún Laoghaire. From this grew Scoil Lorcáin in Monkstown of which he was chairman for many years. It has since served as a model for many similar schools. He was also well known to radio listeners for his contributions to the programme Fáilte Isteach.
In the 1940s, he and other hiking enthusiasts founded An Óige with the aim of setting up a network of youth hostels. He retained his interest in the organisation and became a vice-president. Following his retirement in 1976, he moved from Monkstown to Leixlip where he became prominent in community activities.
He was chairman of the local Tidy Towns Association for a number of years. His wife, Sorcha, died in April 2000. He is survived by his daughter, Nuala, and sons Colm, Ciarán, Seán and Cillian.
Seaghán Ó Briain: born September 25th, 1912; died September 23rd, 2004.