THE President praised Daniel O'Connell for "thinking an approach which was significantly ahead of his time" during a commemorative dinner last night at the Reform Club in London to mark the 150th anniversary of his death.
Although O'Connell "the Liberator" was a man of many contradictions and paradoxes, he was a robust politician, said Mrs Robinson, whose background and experience were on a par with Nelson Mandela's or Martin Luther King's.
"Closer examination shows us a man whose formation and attitudes were very much those of the 18th century, but in many of the causes he advocated or the positions he took, he was ahead of the mid 19th century, and could even be described, in some areas, as a man of the 20th century," she added.
Among the invited guests were the former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald; the historian, Mr Robert Kee; the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Weatherill, and the Irish Ambassador, Mr Ted Barrington.
Proposing a toast to the memory of "the Liberator," the Reform Club's chairman, Mr John Elliott, said his "supreme" political contribution was his campaign for Catholic emancipation. "With some temerity I would place him at the top, and compared with British politicians, where I am on safer ground, and in terms of the management of political innovation, with Lloyd George, Attlee, or Thatcher," he said.
. A group from Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, Tourism Group travelled to Dublin yesterday to lay a wreath on the tomb of O'Connell to mark the anniversary. Led by the honorary mayor of Cahirciveen, Mr Noel Kelliher, the group were joined by a descendant of O'Connell, Mrs Ricarda Cunningham, and Dublin's deputy Lord Mayor, Mr Vincent Jackson.