BENEFACTOR OF IRELAND

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 74, 29 March 1932, Page 7

BENEFACTOR OF IRELAND

Sir Horace Plunkett, the third son of the sixteenth Baron Dunsany, was 77 years of age and belonged to one of the oldest families in Ireland. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he bought, at the age o-f 25, a ranch in Montana and went there tc develop, it. Ten years later he returned to Ireland, and there took up the question of agricultural development. The 'nineties began to show the results of this campaign, and Sir Horace became the first president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. Dairy farming, which later was to develop so successfully, was organised during this period and later as the result of continued efforts there came into toeing an Irish Department of Agriculture, of which Sir Horace was Vice-President. Shortly after this he was appointed a Privy Councillor. For a time he was in Parliament, and an 1917-18 he became Chairman of the Irish Convention.- In 1919 he founded the Horace Plunkett Foundation for the promotion of agricultural development, and in 1922 he was a Senator of •the Irish Free State. Me wjote a number of books on agricultural subjects. His honours include the E.E.S., which he received in 1902, Hon. D.C.L. (Oxon.), Hon. L.L.D, University of Dublin, and Hon. Fellowship of TJni•versity College, Oxford. / In January, .1920, Sir Horace became ill and entered, ft sanatorium in the United States, and the message«announcing this was mutilated and read as announcing his ■death. Sir Horace therefore had the unusual experience of reading his own obituary.