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Tag Archives: Galway City Council


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Birth of Ciarán Cannon, Former Fine Gael Politician

Ciarán Cannon, former Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Galway East constituency from 2011 to 2024, is born on September 19, 1965, in Galway, County Galway. He previously serves as a Senator for the Progressive Democrats and is the last elected leader of that party. He serves as a Minister of State from 2011 to 2014 and again from 2017 to 2020. He serves as a Senator from 2007 to 2011, after being nominated by the Taoiseach.

Before entering politics, Cannon is a planning official for Galway City Council and Dublin City Council, as well as CEO and secretary of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust. In 2002, he is honoured as one of the Galway People of the Year.

As a member of the Progressive Democrats, Cannon is elected to Galway County Council in the 2004 Irish local elections, to represent the Loughrea local electoral area, with 1,307 first preferences. He is an unsuccessful candidate at the 2007 Irish general election in Galway East. He is nominated by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to the 23rd Seanad in 2007.

Cannon is elected as Leader of the Progressive Democrats in April 2008. He is the first leader of the party to sit as a Senator while serving as leader. At his first press conference as party leader, he states that he believes “there was passion, commitment, talent and knowledge within the PDs’ ranks to stage a big comeback.”

However, after speculation increases that Noel Grealish, one of the two Progressive Democrat TDs, intends to leave the party, Cannon announces in September 2008 that a party conference will be held on November 8, 2008, at which he will recommend that the party disband. The delegates present at the conference vote 201–161 to agree with this recommendation.

On March 24, 2009, Cannon announces his decision to resign the leadership of the Progressive Democrats and joins Fine Gael the same day. At the 2011 Irish general election, he is one of two Fine Gael TDs elected in Galway East.

On March 10, 2011, Cannon is appointed by the coalition government led by Enda Kenny as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills with responsibility for Training and Skills. He is dropped as a minister in a reshuffle on July 15, 2014. At the 2016 Irish general election, he is elected to the third seat in Galway East.

On June 20, 2017, Cannon is appointed by the minority government led by Leo Varadkar as Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with responsibility for the Diaspora and International Development. He calls for a “No” vote in the 2018 referendum to allow legislation on abortion.

In 2019, in recognition of his work in education, Cannon is appointed as a UNICEF global champion for education. He is one of seven Generation Unlimited Champions who advocates worldwide for the development of UNICEF’s Gen U programme.

At the 2020 Irish general election, Cannon is elected to the second seat in Galway East. He continues to serve as a minister of state until the formation of a new government on June 27, 2020.

On March 19, 2024, Cannon announces that he will not contest the next general election, blaming a “toxicity in politics.”

Cannon is a musician and songwriter, and recently collaborated with Irish folk singer Seán Keane and others on songwriting projects. One of his co-compositions, “Nature’s Little Symphony,” is performed in Dublin by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of the national Cruinniú celebrations on Easter Monday 2017. Both “Nature’s Little Symphony” and another of his compositions, “Gratitude,” are featured on the album Gratitude recorded by Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2018. On the August 10, 2018, Cannon plays piano with Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of a sold-out performance at the National Concert Hall. In 2019, he composes “An Túr,” a short piano instrumental to celebrate the birthday of W. B. Yeats.

In 2021 Cannon is commissioned to compose the soundtrack to a poem by Emily Cullen as part of the national commemoration of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.

In March 2024, Cannon begins presenting The Grey Lake Cafe, a radio show on Loughrea Community Radio featuring his own musical choices, and interviews with public figures who have a passion for music.

Cannon is also an avid cyclist and cycling safety advocate. He specialises in endurance cycling challenges and on June 19, 2021, he cycles Ireland end to end, a distance of 575 km, in 23 hours and 23 minutes, to raise money for charity.

On July 2, 2021, Cannon is involved in a road traffic collision and suffers serious injuries. On July 2, 2022 he marks the first anniversary of the incident by cycling 500 km around the border of County Galway. Marking the same date in 2023, he cycles 935 km (581 mi) in 56 hours, covering all 32 counties of the island of Ireland while fundraising for Hand In Hand, a charity that supports families challenged by childhood cancer.


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Birth of Michael J. Browne, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh

Michael J. Browne, an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, is born in Westport, County Mayo, on December 20, 1895. He serves as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh for almost forty years from 1937 to 1976.

Browne is an important and outspoken member of the Irish hierarchy. His time as Bishop has been described by the historian James S. Donnelly Jr. as “far-reaching and … controversial,” while the historian of Irish Catholicism John Henry Whyte claims that Browne’s “readiness to put forward his views bluntly is welcome at least to the historian.”

Browne is ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1920, for the Archdiocese of Tuam. He later serves as professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

On August 6, 1937, at the relatively young age of 41, Browne is appointed Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh by Pope Pius XI, receiving his episcopal consecration from Archbishop Thomas Gilmartin on the following August 10. He supports Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s defence of arrests and police searches for cached Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms, declaring, “Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God’s law, and there can be no excuse for that crime – not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity.”

In 1939, Browne is selected by Éamon de Valera to chair the Commission on Vocational Organisation.

Browne is attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians. He is also concerned about public intoxication and other misconduct at the Galway Races, controversies over dancing and the commercial dance halls, as well as immodesty in dress and the closely related issue of so-called “mixed bathing” in Galway and Salthill.

Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemns communism in his pastoral letters. When Cardinal József Mindszenty is detained by Hungary‘s post-war communist government, Browne in 1949 forwards protest resolutions from Galway Corporation, Galway County Council and the University College Galway student body to Pope Pius XII. He also frequently condemns the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist group in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, including the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, Browne says, “non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”

The most enduring monument or physical legacy of Browne’s time as Bishop is the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, commonly known as Galway Cathedral, which is dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Richard James Cushing of Boston, Massachusetts. The site of the old jail had come into the possession of the diocese in 1941 and Browne leads the campaign to construct a new Cathedral. This includes a 1957 audience with Pope Pius XII where the plans are approved.

Browne attends the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and retires in 1976. He dies four years later, at the age of 84, on February 24, 1980.

Browne is parodied in Breandán Ó hÉithir`s novel Lig Sinn i gCathu, which fictionalises late 1940s Galway as “Baile an Chaisil” and Browne as “An tEaspag Ó Maoláin.”

The Irish cabinet minister Noël Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:

“The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny scullcap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash neatly divided the lordly prince into two.”


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Birth of Emer Colleran, Microbiologist & Environmental Advocate

Emer Colleran, Irish microbiologist, academic and an environmental advocate, is born in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, on October 12, 1945. She is professor of microbiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, one of Mary Robinson‘s nominees on the Council of State, and chairwoman of An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland.

Colleran, and her twin Noreen, are born to John and Josie Colleran. One of a family of five children, her father is a school principal and her mother, also a primary school teacher, dies when she is just 11 years old. She completes her secondary education at St. Louis secondary school in Kiltimagh. She spends a lot of time outdoors as a child, particularly fishing, which sparks her interest in the environment.

On entering higher education, Colleran has a grant from the Department of Education, which requires that she do her studies through the Irish language. Her first choice, Medicine, is not available in Irish so she chooses Science. She graduates with a first-class primary degree in Science at University College Galway (now National University of Ireland, Galway) in 1967.

Colleran specialises in anaerobic digestion as a postgraduate and in 1971 becomes a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Colleran lectures in biology at Athlone Regional Technical College (now Athlone Institute of Technology) and Galway Regional Technical College (now Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology) before her appointment as a lecturer in microbiology at NUI Galway in 1976. She is appointed Associate Professor of Microbiology by the Senate of the National University of Ireland in 1990. She is a member of the university’s governing authority for a number of years, but steps down in May 2000 in connection with the selection procedure for the new university president. In October of that year, she is appointed professor of microbiology and chair of the department at NUI Galway.

Colleran is the first director of the Environment Change Institute at NUI Galway set up under the Higher Education Authority‘s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions in 2000. In 2010, the Environmental Change Institute and the Martin Ryan Marine Research Institute are merged to form the current day Ryan Institute at NUI Galway.

In 1973 Colleran is elected to the committee of the Galway Association of An Taisce, part of a national voluntary organisation the aims of which are to conservation in Ireland through education, publicity and positive action. She serves as membership secretary and then treasurer to the Galway branch before becoming chairman. In 1981, as chairman of the Galway branch, she hits back at claims from Galway County Council that An Taisce are “an anonymous group, wielding power unfairly.” She is involved in the compilation of a controversial planning report, published by An Taisce in 1983, which highlights abuse of planning laws by city and county councillors across Ireland, and in particular in counties Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and Louth.

Colleran serves as Environmental Officer for An Taisce before being elected National Chairman in 1987, the first time a chairman has come from one of the western county associations. She continues to use her position to campaign against misuse of planning laws, for a clamp down on pollution of rivers and lakes, and against a move to scrap An Foras Forbartha, a body that provides independent monitoring of pollution. During her three years as chairman, until May 1990, she is particularly involved in debates over local environmental and planning issues, in particular over gold mining in the west of Ireland, a proposed airport for Clifden, and the planned sewage treatment plant at Mutton Island, County Galway.

In 1991 plans are announced for a new visitor centre, to be located at Mullaghmore in The Burren. Colleran is among those who are part of an appeal, saying that while the plan for the national park is welcomed by An Taisce, they want the visitor centre to be located three or four miles from Mullaghmore.

President Mary Robinson appoints seven new members to her Council of State in February 1991, including Colleran. Other new members appointed at the time are Monica Barnes, Patricia O’Donovan, Quintan Oliver, Rosemarie Smith, Dónal Toolan and D. Kenneth Whitaker. The new Council of State represents a wide spectrum of Irish life and is widely welcomed, although Fine Gael is disappointed that its leader John Bruton is not included.

In 1991, Colleran is one of 15 people appointed to Taoiseach Charles Haughey‘s Green 2000 Advisory Group, to determine which problems will face the environment in the next century. The group is led by Dr. David Cabot, special advisor on environmental affairs.

Colleran is appointed a member of the National Heritage Council in 1995 by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins. In the same year the Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Eamon Gilmore, appoints her to the chair of the Sea Trout working group to oversee the implementation of recommendations to tackle a decline in sea trout stocks, particularly in the west of Ireland.

In 2003 Colleran is elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Colleran is recognised at the annual NUI Galway Alumni Awards in 2004 when she receives the award for Natural Science, sponsored by Seavite Bodycare Ltd., which acknowledges a graduate who has made an outstanding contribution in the field of natural science.

Colleran dies on June 30, 2018, at University Hospital Galway.


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Birth of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Fianna Fáil Politician

maire-geoghegan-quinn

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, former Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Carna, County Galway on September 5, 1950. She served as a European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science from 2010 to 2014 and as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Galway West constituency from 1975 to 1997.

Geoghegan is educated at Coláiste Muire, Toormakeady, in County Mayo and at Carysfort College in Blackrock, from where she qualifies as a teacher. She is married to John Quinn, with whom she has two children. Her novel The Green Diamond, about four young women sharing a house in Dublin in the 1960s, is published in 1996.

Her father, Johnny Geoghegan, is a Fianna Fáil TD for Galway West from 1954 until his death in 1975. His daughter successfully contests the subsequent by-election. From 1977 to 1979 she works as Parliamentary Secretary at the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy. She serves as a member of Galway City Council from 1985 to 1991.

Geoghegan-Quinn supports Charles Haughey in the 1979 Fianna Fáil leadership election and is subsequently appointed to the cabinet post of Minister for the Gaeltacht. Thus, she becomes the first woman to hold an Irish cabinet post since 1922 (after Constance Markievicz had been appointed Minister for Labour in 1919 during the First Dáil) and the first woman to hold such a post in the history of the Irish state.

In 1982, Geoghegan-Quinn is appointed Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills. Her tenure is short because the 23rd Dáil lasts only 279 days, and a Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition is elected at the November 1982 general election.

When Fianna Fáil returns to power after the 1987 general election, Geoghegan-Quinn becomes Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach. She expects a senior government position but is disappointed. She resigns in 1991, in opposition to Charles Haughey’s leadership of the party. The following year Albert Reynolds, whom she backs for the leadership, becomes Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader. For her loyalty to Reynolds, she is appointed Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport. She becomes Minister for Justice and Equality in 1993, in which post she introduces substantial law reform legislation, including the decriminalisation of homosexuality. She is also briefly acting Minister for Equality and Law Reform in late 1994, following the resignation of Labour minister Mervyn Taylor from Reynolds’ coalition government.

When Reynolds resigns as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994, Geoghegan-Quinn is seen as his preferred successor. In the resulting leadership election, she stands against Bertie Ahern. A win would make her the first female Taoiseach. On the day of the vote, however, she withdraws from the contest “in the interests of party unity.” It is reported that she has the support of only 15 members of the 66-strong parliamentary party.

At the 1997 general election Geoghegan-Quinn retires from politics completely, citing privacy issues, after details about her 17-year-old son’s expulsion from school appeared in the newspapers. Other reports suggest that she sees her prospects for promotion under Ahern as poor, and a weak showing in constituency opinion polls indicate her seat could be in danger. She becomes a non-executive director of Aer Lingus, a member of the board of the Declan Ganley-owned Ganley Group and writes a column for The Irish Times.

Geoghegan-Quinn is appointed to the European Court of Auditors in 1999, replacing former Labour minister Barry Desmond. She is appointed for a second term at the Court of Auditors in March 2006, and resigns on February 9, 2010. She is nominated by Taoiseach Brian Cowen to become Ireland’s European Commissioner in November 2009, and is subsequently allocated the Research, Innovation and Science portfolio.

In April 2010, after numerous calls are made over several days for Geoghegan-Quinn to surrender her pensions as an Irish former politician, which are worth over €104,000, while she remains in a paid public office, she does so.

In July 2015, it is announced that Geoghegan-Quinn will chair an independent panel to examine issues of gender equality among Irish higher education staff.