Diplomacy and Identity

Former Ambassador Bobby McDonagh

• 📅Thursday, November 28, 2024
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30
• 🏟Bray Golf Club(map)

In this talk to our Bray Heads U3A group, former Irish Ambassador, Bobby McDonagh, will be drawing on his own impressive diplomatic career, to illustrate the ways in which diplomacy and identity are closely interlinked. In particular, he will b e highlighting three principal diplomatic arenas in which he was involved, where identity has played a particularly important role: the European Union; the United Kingdom and its relations with Ireland; and the Northern Ireland peace process.

Bobby was educated at Gonzaga College Dublin and Balliol College Oxford.

During his diplomatic career, he served as Ireland’s Permanent Representative to the European Union, and as Ambassador to the United Kingdom, to Italy and to Malaysia. He also held several senior positions at Department of Foreign Affairs HQ in Dublin, including as Deputy Secretary General. He worked in the cabinets of two European Commissioners and was an official of the European Parliament.

Since retirement in 2018, he qualified as an executive coach at UCD’s Smurfit Business School and subsequently completed the advanced coaching course at the School. He now works as an executive coach and has a growing practice.

He is also a public commentator, including as a regular contributor to the Irish Times, on a wide range of international issues including the European Union and British-Irish relations. He has written extensively about the European Union.

He is married with four daughters and twelve grandchildren.

CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION. The Six Marys

Jean Farrell, retired teacher, turned comedian, author.

• 📅Thursday, December 12, 2024
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30
• 🏟Bray Golf Club(map)

Written and presented by Jean Farrell, this play has been performed, over 100 times, in theatres all over Ireland and in London. As narrator, Jean reads from diaries spanning six decades. These follow the lives of herself and her friends, Mary Black, Mary Brown, Mary Green, Mary White, Mary Grey and Mary Golden.

In the 1950s diaries, Jean tells about the comics and catechism they read. She talks about the nuns, the procession, gym slips and much more. In the diaries from the 60’s, their search for Mr Wonderful at hops brings great hope to their lonely hearts. Their expectations are ridiculous!

In the 70’s, they begin married life.

Throughout the following decades the friends meet regularly. The Marys discuss the true realities of married life, rearing babies, children, teenagers and their life - when all have left home.

Eventually the six Marys realise that you make your own dreams come true. The theme is universal.

The journey of self-discovery is interspersed with well-known hit songs from the various eras, sung by Catherine Gallagher..

Deportation of Women to Australia

Joan Kavanagh

• 📅Thursday, January 9, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

ESB and ESB International

Don Moore former Business development Manager, Engineering Director and Managing Director of ESBInternational. Also served as President of Irish Exporters Assoc. and the Irish Academy of Engineers.

• 📅Thursday, January 23, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

Don will look at the foundation of the ESB in 1928 and chart how it developed the expertise to plan, design and construct Ireland’s infrastructure, hydro and and thermal power stations, transmission grid and distribution system. A key factor was its ability to recruit high calibre staff, most of whom spent their entire careers with the company.

Another factor was the willingness of the staff to work abroad often in difficult countries. The ability of the staff to show empathy and understanding in developing countries was a major part of ESBI’s success.

Ireland’s inability to build major projects today will also be discussed, drawing from ESBI’s experience.

Don Moore graduated as a Civil Engineer in 1969. Joined ESB to work on the construction of Turlough Hill, a pumped storage power station in the Wicklow Mountains. After completion of Turlough Hill, worked as design engineer on the Poolbeg and Shannon Bridge Power Stations.

In 1981 he was part of the design team on an ESB contract to design the transmission system for the new industrial city of Jubail in Saudi Arabia, the largest project in the world with 50,000 people working on site.

Success on the Jubail project led to the creation of ESBI over the next 25 years carried out projects in 100 countries around the world.

National Print Museum BOOKING OPENS SOON

• 📅Thursday, January 30, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

Guided Historical Tour of the National Print Museum, Old Garrison Chapel, Beggars Bush Barracks, Haddington Road, Dublin 4

When: Thursday, 30th January 2025 at 10.30 (please note earlier time than usual)

Fee: €7 per person (includes a modest gratuity for the guide) to be paid in cash on the day

Group size: 30 people (no possibility of extension)

This is a hidden gem in a beautiful building and just the thing to get us over any end of winter blues. We will have a guided tour where we will learn how the printing press, invented in 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg, changed the world. View an original 1916 Proclamation, Ireland’s most important historical printed document, and hear the fascinating story of its production. Our guide will demonstrate how printing was done throughout most of the last few centuries. The main collection is not behind glass or rope, but is instead an example of a working collection. We will have the opportunity to compose our names in type and print a personalised poster to bring home. How could you pass up the chance to do this!

Also, our earlier start time is because slightly later that morning a group of retired printers will attend the Museum to operate the machines so there will be lots of action going on. Nothing stuffy about this!

Access is a short 15 minute walk from either Lansdowne Road or Grand Canal Dock Dart stations.

Wicklow Gaol

Carmel Uí Cheallagh retired recently from her post as Senior Executive librarian in the Lexicon Library. She has had adult short stories, poetry and biographical pieces published in numerous publicat

• 📅Thursday, February 6, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

Thousands of men, women and children passed through the gates of Wicklow Gaol. Common criminals and and Irish rebels alike endured painful punishment, corrupt gaolers and horrendous conditions. During major events in Irish history, including the 1798 rebellion, the Great Famine and the Civil War many local and national heroes were imprisoned within its walls.

Some prisoners were executed there; others were transported to faraway lands.

One hundred years after its closure, Wicklow Gaol has a history to tell that it is not for the squeamish, so step inside if you dare…..

The Quakers in Ireland 1624-2024

Dr. John McCormick

• 📅Thursday, February 20, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

Edward Worth Library, BOOKING OPENS SOON

• 📅Thursday, February 27, 2025
• 🕥11:30 - 12:30

CALLING ALL BIBLIOPHILES!

Guided tour of the Edward Worth Library (1733), Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin 8

(opposite Heuston Station)

When: Thursday, 27th February 2025, 11.30am

Fee: €2 per person (small gratuity for the guide) to be collected in cash on the day

Group size: 23 people (no extension possible)

This visit is the perfect follow-on from our previous visit to the National Print Museum and will be an absolute treat.

We are exceptionally lucky in having a guided tour of this magnificent 18th-century library by Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian, Edward Worth Library.

Edward Worth (1676–1733), a notable Dublin physician, was a governor and major benefactor of Dr Steevens’ Hospital. He bequeathed his extensive and wide-ranging collection of books to the hospital and a special room was constructed to house them. The collection holds fine examples of typography and is considered to be the best collection of early modern book bindings in Ireland. While the movable furniture – tables, chairs, desks – of the library have changed over the centuries the original book-shelves, cases, glass-panes remain as they were in the 1730s. This was probably the first library in Ireland to protect books behind glass-fronted doors.

In a recent publication, Prof Raymond Gillespie described the development of the display of books in eighteenth-century Ireland

‘Prior to this, books had been stored in boxes, chests, cupboards or even bags. From the 1680s shelves were more commonly used, with books arranged by size, and in the eighteenth century glazed bookcases became more popular.’

Raymond Gillespie, ‘Irish country house libraries and social change, 1650–1750’ in The Intellectual World of the Country House in Ireland and Britain (Dublin: 2024), p. 92.

We are strictly limited to 23 people for this tour.

Maria Edgeworth, her Family, Circle of Friends and the Place that influenced her life.

Matthew Farrell, awarded Ireland’s Heritage Hero in 2016 in recognition for his contribution to preserving the legacy of Maria Edgeworth and her family. He established The Maria Edgeworth Centre and

• 📅Thursday, March 20, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30

Maria Edgeworth 1768-1849 was an unassuming pioneer in both adult and children’s literature. Her first work “Letters for Literary Ladies” was published in 1795 when she was 27 years of age. Considered by many to be the ‘Mother of the Novel’ with what was considered to be the first ever ‘Big House’ novel, ‘Castle Rackrent’ in 1800.

Many writers, such as Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen and Ivan Turgenev were influenced by her work.. Maria took great interest in the development of the nation and was keenly interested in what was happening in Europe, particularly in France. She travelled to Paris, Geneva and Brussels in 1802 where she met with many influential figures of the time both in literature and politics. Many of these historical figures including Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, among others visited her in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford. Although she considered herself a private person, in truth she was a writer, educationalist and revolutionary feminist.

Painting from a Liminal Perspective: Hughie O’Donoghue’s Passion Series and Other Works

Noreen Casey

• 📅Thursday, April 17, 2025
• 🕥10:30 - 12:30