When we laid him to rest, Michael T. Connolly was frail and full of years. But he was once a colossus who, from the second world war years, strode across the lands and parishes of rural Wexford. His name was a household word in farming and sporting Ireland.
To all those who worked with him and for him the recall presents no difficulty. The many small communities he revitalised remember. Anyone of vision and eagerness in the rural areas and those who were determined to make progress will remember. The great many organisations, agricultural committees, the small committees striving to pull themselves and their parishes up from their knees will remember. To that list must be added the developers of farm produce factories, such as Wexford Creamery, farm produce co-operatives, show jumping, breeding, racing, agricultural shows, Ireland's National Ploughing Championships and inevitably the World Ploughing Championships which he was instrumental in bringing to Rosegarland in Wellingtonbridge twice, in 1974 and 1981.
The first of those championships was fraught with controversy. Rhodesia, as it then was, was an apartheid country. From a country of several million people only the white colonists numbering about half-a-million were represented, by two white competitors. African nations withdrew and President Erskine Childers refused to attend. M.T. Connolly was one of the men who decided there was an important job to complete and so the event went on. Next time the name of that country showed a significant change, Rhodesia was now Zimbabwe.
Macra Na Feirme and Muintir Na T∅re must be included also along with the agricultural education bodies he built and of which he was so proud.
He used to dismiss praise by saying, "I'm an official and that's my job". That might be accepted were it not for the fact that most of his public enthusiasms were contributed after office hours, from 7 p.m. to midnight and often into the small hours in country halls and homes. These meetings, seminal or otherwise, took place from Wicklow's mountain slopes to the Town of Hook on the Atlantic coast.
He was dynamic, impatient, feverishly hunting for new opportunities to advance the rural people of Co Wexford. He arrived as a young graduate in the 1930s. In a few years he was Chief Agricultural Officer. The state of farming in the war years and afterwards was awful. There may have been a reason why there was a resistance to rapid progress. In the forties and fifties most farmers were either the sons or grandsons of evictable tenant farmers. Qualified agricultural advisers were regarded in many cases with mockery. The words frequently bandied about were: "what could those fountain-pen farmers tell a farmer about farming his own land?"
By present standards it was a shocking scene when the adviser was there to help farmers make their places viable, and at no cost. That was the culture in which M.T. Connolly had to operate. As he said himself, the whole county seemed to be covered in white grass and the knowledge of soil treatment and soil composition was almost non-existent.
To this entire area and the collateral fall out from this miserable scene Michael Connolly applied himself with dynamism rarely experienced in officials at that time. He injected steel into the backs of groups, families and individuals. He did not suffer fools gladly. Woe betide anyone who did not respond or do their homework.
He stimulated county council schemes to help farm families. He introduced scholarships to the best agricultural colleges in Ireland or Europe. It's a sign of the awfulness prevailing that in one year there were 22 scholarships on offer and only 15 or 16 boys sat the exam. But Connolly persevered and led the battle for farm life education onwards.
He encouraged, cajoled, won confidences by degrees, and he was happy in his work. M.T. Connolly's service to Co Wexford is now over. He worked and trained for the old definition of farming: "Agriculture is the art of tilling their soil in order to produce the greatest amount of food". It is not so anymore. Maximum production now brings penalties. It is a curious fact that it was a development Michael Connolly helped to bring bout at a time where maximum production was the ultimate aim.
Ar Dheis lamh DΘ agus i measc na naingeal go raibh a anam cr≤dha.
N.F.