HE was the first ethnic Indian Muslim socialist psychiatrist to be elected to the Dail and Dr Moosajee Bhamjee revelled in the fact. Apart from being described as "the only Indian among the cowboys" at Leinster House, in his maiden speech to the Dail in December 1992 he said - amid laughter - that he hoped to bring "colour and flavour" to the proceedings.
He did, but infrequently. Indeed local sources say that probably the greatest threat to his retaining his seat was the perception that he was not given to regular attendance at Dail sittings.
However, they point out that he delivered on the two issues which had brought him into the Dail - Mullaghmore, and the retention of the general hospital in Ennis - and had emerged well from the Shannon stop over controversy.
Dr Bhamjee was born at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in December 1947. His father emigrated there from Bombay in 1919. While a student in Dublin, at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1969, Dr Bhamjee met his wife Claire Kenny, from Cooraclare, in Co Clare. They married in 1975, with both Muslim and Catholic ceremonies.
Eventually they were married by the Jesuits at the St Francis Xavier Church in Gardiner Street Dublin. They now have three children, Omar, (19) Miriam (18), and Roisin (12).
"The first priest we went to tried to talk us out of getting married," he recalled in 1992. "He felt that, because I was a Muslim entitled to four wives, Claire's position would not be secure."
Dr Bhamjee specialised in psychiatry and was appointed in 1983 as a consultant at Our Lady's Hospital, Ennis, and became deeply involved in community activities.
However, not everyone was happy with his election in 1992. His mother told him: "But I brought you up to be a doctor not a politician." And now he is what he was brought up to be.
