The Irish Times’s obituary writers have marked the deaths of more than 110 people this year, from entrepreneurs to musicians to journalists. Here is a selection
Obituaries of 2024:
He was a strong advocate for a European supergrid using thin, fast, cost-effective and energy-efficient cables to distribute electricity from renewable sources, using technology he was developing in the SuperNode superconductor technology project with his Norwegian partner company, Aker Horizons. In 1989, Ní Mhurchú was promoted to divisional head of Cork Local Radio, which was rebranded as Cork 89FM when the first independent radio stations were being licensed. She retired in 1998.
He regularly published highly regarded scientific papers and was an influential figure in the European Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture Advisory Commission of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. He was also a key figure in the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club and served as its president in the 1970s.
He had been working as a freelance journalist when he moved to Ireland in 1991, and later moved in to the home of Welsh artist Jules Thomas, near Schull. After Toscan du Plantier’s body was found at her west Cork holiday home on December 23rd, 1996, he reported as a journalist on the murder but later became the prime suspect.
Pioneering psychiatrist Ivor Browne died on January 24th, aged 94. He has been credited with transforming attitudes to mental illness, particularly his understanding of the role of trauma. He believed that mental illness was rooted in traumatic experience and, while he believed that drugs could play a role in helping patients, he campaigned against the overuse of medications and electroconvulsive therapy.
Fintan O’Toole: We trusted Ivor Browne with our darkest secrets. He was one of Ireland’s great liberators – The Irish Times Other artists promoted by them included Rita Duffy, Hector McDonnell, Norah McGuinness, Nano Reid and Mainie Jellett. They also championed the art of modern artist Mary Swanzy. He had the unique distinction of being the only person in the history of the State to become taoiseach because of a change of government without an election halfway through a Dáil term. He succeeded to the office in December 1994 when the Labour Party pulled out of government with Fianna Fáil and did a deal with Fine Gael to form a new administration.
Michael O’Regan, who died on February 18th aged 70, was an Irish Times parliamentary correspondent, political analyst and broadcaster. A Kerryman, he was a vociferous supporter of his native county and served as president of the Kerry Association in Dublin in recent years. He appeared on Radio Kerry’s Call From the Dáil slot on the Kerry Today show, where he provided a lively retelling of the week’s political events.
He was professor of human nutrition at Trinity College Dublin Medical School for more than 20 years before moving to University College Dublin where he was professor of food and health. He was also director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health from 2006-2013 and was professor of nutrition at the University of Ulster from 2013-2016.
He chaired the Food Safety Authority of Ireland from 2013-2018. A prolific writer, he was working on his fourth book when he died. He became known for his distinctive reporting style and his empathy with subjects. His interview with Nelson Mandela in South Africa’s first post-apartheid general election in 1994 scooped the world’s media and featured in Mandela’s autobiography. Investigative work led to him being named Journalist of the Year, jointly with colleague George Lee, in 1998, for investigating allegations of tax evasion at National Irish Bank.Irish-American actor and writer, died on March 11th, aged 92.
His biography was a bestseller when published in 1998 and he followed it with Singing My Him Song in 2000, and Death Need Not Be Fatal in 2017. Known for his versatility, he played Biff in Death of a Salesman, Eilert Lövborg in Hedda Gabler and Mr Parksy in The Unexpected Man. In 1969, he had a small part in David Lean’s film Ryan’s Daughter and later appeared alongside Gabriel Byrne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, as Sir Ulfius.
In 1973, her future husband Eddie Gallagher recruited her to assist him in seizing a helicopter, from which he attempted to bomb a barracks in Strabane. Not long after her termination, Cleary received the President’s Award from the Public Health Physicians of Canada, for her “outstanding contribution to public health and preventive medicine”.
Her significant church commissions included the Angel of Peace at St Teresa’s Carmelite Church on Dublin’s Clarendon Street, the decorative doors of Galway Cathedral, the altar and baptismal font in UCC’s Honan Chapel, and the monumental sculpture of Pope John Paul II in Maynooth. In 2004 he won the Laurence O’Shaughnessy Award, presented by the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, to outstanding Irish poets. His short stories won the Francis McManus Prize and the Listowel Writers’ Week short story award.
He was born in Crumlin, Dublin, but moved to Hertfordshire in England with his mother when his parents separated. After excelling in schoolboy football, he was playing for St Alban’s City when he was spotted by a Tottenham Hotspur scout and signed. By the age of 20 he was the club’s established right-back and starred in their FA Cup final win over Chelsea at Wembley in May 1967. Kinnear would win several more medals with Spurs: a pair of League Cups in 1971 and 1973, and a Uefa Cup in 1972.
Jo English, who died on April 8th, aged 59, was a sailor and co-manager of SailCork, the sailing school based in Cobh. For almost 20 years the couple ran SailCork’s “sunshine yachting holidays”, bringing groups on chartered boats in the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas. He did the teaching while she did the cooking and she was known for producing exceptional meals from the confined galleys of boats.From Dublin’s Gardiner Street, he studied social science at UCD.
Teri Hayden, who died April 18th aged 75, was a trailblazing agent who guided the careers of many notable Irish actors including Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Negga and Gabriel Byrne. She reportedly rejected an offer from an A-list Hollywood agency to buy her out, and the Dublin-based agency is now run by her son Karl.A woman of many careers, she first trained as a pharmacist and ran her own chemist shop in Killala where she also organised a group of women to form a cheese-making co-operative. She later moved to Dublin to study politics and economics in UCD. She married young British journalist Michael Viney in 1965 and worked as a researcher and producer in RTÉ.
Mary Banotti was a Fine Gael MEP, a presidential election candidate and a committed campaigner for the rights of women and children. She died on May 10th, just weeks before her 85th birthday. In 1997, she won the Fine Gael nomination to contest the presidency in succession to Mary Robinson but ultimately lost out to Mary McAleese.
A woman of strong faith, Bartley acted as matron of the volunteers for the Dublin Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes each year. She was also an active member of the Guild of Irish Catholic Nurses and represented the International Catholic Committee of Nurses and Medico-Social Assistants at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.
His business interests took a downturn in the last decade and a half. His attempts to stave off the collapse of the Waterford Wedgwood business saw him suffer a huge financial loss. And he was involved in one of the most high-profile corporate clashes of recent decades when he lost control of Independent News and Media to Denis O’Brien. Once reported to be Ireland’s wealthiest person, he was declared bankrupt in 2015.
He worked in several government departments and in National Irish Bank, before setting up Meridian International, a VAT processing company. Along with a group of investors, he bought Baltimore Technologies, which specialised in internet security, for the equivalent of about €381,000 in 1996. He was co-author, with Peter Murtagh, of The Boss, a biography of the 1982 government of the former Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, and of Blind Justice, an examination of the Sallins mail train robbery and subsequent investigation.
He embarked on a professional career as a musician as a young teen, touring with bands across Ireland and the UK, playing a wide mix of styles including English and Scottish country music. Paul Mackay, who died on June 11th aged 83, was one of co-founders of the Progressive Democrats , along with Des O’Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell.
Mackay raised the bank loan for party headquarters in Dublin’s South Frederick Street and played a central role in the 1987 general election when the PDs won 14 seats. He was director of elections in the 1989 contest which saw the party reduced to six seats but ended up into government with Fianna Fáil.
As RTÉ's Northern editor, he reported on Stormont politics from 2001 and earned the trust of leading politicians across the political spectrum. He also landed one of the most memorable sporting scoops when he secured an interview with footballer Roy Keane after he left Saipan in the build-up to the 2002 World Cup.
He took part in RTÉ's first television broadcast of the All-Ireland hurling final in 1962, alternating Irish language commentary with Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin doing English. In 1964 he took over the live television coverage as Gaeilge of All-Ireland minor finals. MacGrath had a reputation as a straightforward and reasonable criminal judge and was not afraid to speak publicly on legal matters and in defence of her profession. In 2016, she spoke out about the limitations of the judicial system to enforce drink-driving legislation and to prosecute drunken drivers. She also wrote so-called bench books for judges on her experiences of case law and legislation – particularly in relation to drink driving.
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