'Everything I touched was interesting': Cork woman who handled top secret documents for Royal Navy set to celebrate 100th birthday

A Cork woman who handled top secret documents for the Royal Navy and whose flat was bombed during the Second World War reads The Echo every day and celebrates her 100th birthday this Sunday.

Ballincollig resident Irene Gibbings has lived a full life and, as she waits for her congratulatory birthday letter from President Higgins, she is showing no sign of slowing down.

Asked the secret of her great age, Ms Gibbings said simply that it was to have an interest in people and in their stories.

“That’s what life is about, everything I touched was interesting, and I always got on well with people,” she said.

A native of Lower Montenotte, she recalls walking to school in Summerhill South.

After school, a Murphy’s civil service course on the Grand Parade gave her invaluable typing and shorthand skills. In 1942, she went to work in London, getting a job as a clerical worker in the admiralty in Whitehall.

There she worked diligently and handled highly sensitive classified material at the height of the war. It was during that time that her home was bombed.

“They put me with the U-boat department, and at that time you had the German submarines down along the South coast [of England] and they were firing at all the ships coming around from the South of Ireland,” she said.

After the war, she worked for a wealthy, Irish-connected family in Argentina, learning to speak Spanish there. She travelled far and wide, visiting North Africa and South America.

Ms Gibbings retired to Ballincollig in 1986 and, closing in on a century, she is hale and hearty, and stays up to date.

“I get The Echo every morning, it comes in at 8am and I get all the news from it,” she said.

She said she never really celebrated birthdays, but with her nephew George coming to visit on Sunday, she might make an exception.

Looking back, she said she has enjoyed life so far, and looked forward to the future.

“I did all of that, and I have no regrets,” she said.