On a lovely sunny Autumn day in 2024 we gathered on Baggot Street for the unveiling of a plaque on one of the new public benches on Baggot Street that Siobhán and the Pembroke Road Association had fought hard to get installed. Sitting on the bench are her husband Dr. Pat Wallace and Susan McCarrick of the Pembroke Road Association. As we remembered her this is what I had to say:
A Ard Mheara, Brian, Mick, Pat, Go raibh mile maith agaibh as a bheith anseo inniu. Tá muid anseo inniu chun cuimhneamh ar mo dheirfiúr Siobhan. Bheadh Siobhan an-bhródúil asaibh.
I’ve started with a few words of Irish as Siobhán was learning the language in recent years, yet another side to her interests.
Thank you all for making today happen. Lord Mayor, James, thank you for making the time to be here, we are honoured by your presence. Pat, thank you for your words. You and I are certainly used to public speaking, but a day like this can be tough. Thanks to Brian Hanney from Dublin City Council for your hard work in improving the the city, to Mick Quinn for your work in the background. Thanks to everyone gathered here this morning in her memory.
Today is a day to remember a kind and loving sister, aunt, wife, an artist, a campaigner, a gaeilgeoir in the making, a friend. Over the last six months through you I’ve learnt so much more about the many sides to Siobhán that I hadn’t known before and that is a real privilege.
Siobhán had a passion for people, for the city and for the neighbourhood and community of Baggotonia. I will always be grateful for her kindness and love for our children. For taking time to encourage our sons’ interests. She loved all her nieces and nephews dearly, she was interested in their lives, and talked often about their plans and achievements. As we will all remember, Siobhán was an amazing hostess. She served incredible food to all comers as guests in Pembroke Lane.
I want to go back though, half a century to a time when the UCD School of architecture was on Earlsfort Terrace, twenty minutes’ walk from here, when a young woman, my sister Siobhán brought her baby brother on a walk through town, into Stephen’s Green, past the sculpture and the fountains, through the archway and down Grafton Street into Bewley’s cafe for tea and a bun. That’s where she introduced me to the Harry Clarke windows, and the buzz of that clattery cafe that gave me an interest and an enthusiasm for this city, something that we shared ever since.
Ten years later she co-founded with the late Kirsten Douglas the Mansion House Arts and Crafts Fair that was held in the Round Room on Dawson Street for many years. It was a winter boost in sales for craftworkers, a Christmas job for me and my student friends as we worked there in our student years, some dressed up as giant Christmas presents, and sent to walk up and down Grafton Street to publicise the Arts and Crafts Fair.
In 1990 I was studying in Venice, and Siobhán came to visit with her new fellah, and he certainly seemed to have a good feel for the history of that city, which impressed me. A few years later when Jean Kennedy Smith took up office as US Ambassador to Ireland Siobhán and Pat acted as her friend and mentor as she worked to deliver a peace process that changed the face of this shared island.
In the late 1990s she acquired a 15th century Gaelic Tower House beside the Burren and gave it a new lease of life that continued its transformation into an exquisite dwelling place in Co. Clare.
In recent years she put her energy into many causes and campaigns. She gave me great counsel and support in my political campaigns over the years. She liked to seek out people, not parties, and I certainly know of politicians from at least three political parties, often ideologically opposed whose candidates she campaigned for over the years. More importantly, she fought to protect her wonderful neighbourhood from the excesses of post Celtic Tiger greed. As Chair of the Pembroke Residents Association she spoke out against the utterly shocking unauthorised demolition of the O’Rahilly House on Herbert Park. She rightfully objected to the first iteration of the Bus Connects plan which would have removed heritage railings and trees from Pembroke Road.
She was also a campaigner for women, she sought reforms in the Catholic Church to give women a stronger voice, and helped ensure that the women in our family history were remembered.
She would have been pleased to see Mary Lavin recently commemorated in the naming of the refurbished Park at the Grand Canal, and hear that a bookshop will be provided in the new development. I suspect the amazing women who ran Parson’s bookshop a stone’s throw from here would also have been pleased. I was fortunate to have known Mary King who worked there.
We don’t have a television, so I keep forgetting that Siobhán, Pat and the dogs appeared regularly on Gogglebox. It was lovely to see tributes from her Gogglebox fans on the RIP.ie condolences page.
On a more serious note, Siobhán was a tenacious campaigner. She would have been quick to point out the unfinished business of protecting our city. She worked to find a civic use for the old Baggot Street Hospital, and many of you here today now have to continue her work to bring it back into use again as a keystone building in the heart of the city.
In remembering her, Patricia Hunt of the Hunt family in Limerick said “Siobhán was a wonderful people person, an amazing cook, artist, conservationist, author, lover of Ireland and animals - some of her extraordinary gifts.“ Siobhán we are so proud of you, we miss you greatly, and we will remember your time on this fragile earth with much happiness and joy.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dilis
