[6] He became Commissioner for Railways on 29 December 29 1932, succeeding William James Cleary, who resigned after surviving a feud with Premier Jack Lang.
After five years he was pleased to announce that the Railways had made a profit of £28,000, modest enough, but a welcome change from deficits in the millions.
[7] He was a popular official, with a ready smile and archetypical Irish flattery — blarney — and a politician's memory for names and faces.
He was not closely related to Monsignor Patrick Joseph Hartigan, better known as John O'Brien, author of Around the Boree Log.
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