Modern hero who helps to bring them all back home

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It was about three weeks before Christmas and Galway Airport was still up and flying; most of those waiting for the flight to London had empty bags in their hands, anticipating the transportation home of several bulky purchases from the environs of the Oxford Road.

Among those queueing for the flight was a familiar face – the then-TD from North Mayo, Jerry Cowley, who was as full of the Christmas spirit as anyone else but whose London expedition wasn’t a shopping one.

Instead the GP from Mulranny sheepishly explained that he was on a different pre-Christmas mission – to find the forgotten Irish and bring some of them home for Christmas.

He didn’t mean to deflate the festive spirit because he’d never have told you his business only you were nosy enough to ask – but in an instant you realised that this was the real meaning of Christmas.

This was no one-off excursion either because, long before he sat in Leinster House, Jerry Cowley had an indefatigable commitment to helping the Irish ex-pats who might have fallen through the cracks.

His dream was St Brendan’s Village in his adopted home of Mulranny – a vision that became a reality and provided a place where elderly people from the area, no longer able to care for themselves independently, now had somewhere to live close to everything and everyone they knew best.

But this was also a housing complex for the returning emigrant, the generation who left these shores in the forties, fifties and sixties to seek a better life in London and who may not have seen their dreams come true.

The emigrants he had in mind were from Mayo and while Mulranny might not have been their home place, it was a million miles better than a squat in Cricklewood or Camden Town.

And on that December morning, Jerry Cowley was off to London – not for the shopping or the Christmas spirit – but to find the forgotten Irish and bring them home.

Some would have come for the Christmas and other might have stayed, but in either case when there was no one looking for them, Jerry Cowley was the man.

He called it the Safe Home Ireland project – and that charitable scheme has now expanded, with outreach offices in Galway, Portlaoise and Limerick.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.