Sir, - Moving to Limerick eight years ago from an Oxford led by a vigorous socialist city council, I was delighted to find Jim Kemmy in what I had been warned was a deeply conservative city. By 1989 he had a firm and popular following in the city, a fact which goes some way to demonstrate the flimsy nature of Limerick's conservative reputation.
What impressed me most about Jim Kenny was that he had a very sure grip of contemporary socialism, in which economic issues and concern for the disadvantaged are considered in easy juxtaposition with family planning, the status of women, urban issues, health, leisure, the arts and entertainment.
His editorship of the Old Limerick Journal has been noted in the obituaries as an example of his interest in culture and history. But this interest also led him to support a whole host of heterogeneous, broadly cultural groups that have appeared in Limerick, some only temporarily, in the past 10 years or so - the Limerick School Project, the Island Theatre Company, small alternative groupings of artists - as well as more established institutions such as the City Art Gallery.
I encountered his work and benefitted from his generosity in the field of urban history and conservation. He was a founder member of the Limerick chapter of the Irish Georgian Society and latterly not only raised the sponsorship for, but gave a personal donation to the reissue of my architectural history of the city, The Building of Limerick.
While Jim Kemmy's political convictions obviously had an intellectual basis, the political journey that he followed was animated by his personality; he was a most warm and generous person. He loved Limerick - the people, its history and institutions - and for Limerick he would spare no effort. He was the sort of person whom our children, when they are grown up, will associate with an earlier time when people were finer, more principled, than they are now; he was outstanding in his generation. - Yours, etc.,
South Circular Road, Limerick.