Don O’Leary leaves ‘a significant legacy’ for Cork's alternative education sector

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has led tributes to Don O’Leary, the former director of the Cork Life Centre, who passed away yesterday morning at the age of 68.

For more than 18 years, Mr O’Leary worked as director of the Cork Life Centre, providing one-to-one, relationship-based tuition to hundreds of young Cork people failed by Ireland’s mainstream education system.

Mr O’Leary had been living with terminal cancer since 2021, and to the end he was adamant that he wanted nobody to use phrases such as “he had been bravely fighting cancer”, because he believed such language implied judgement on those who have illnesses.

Mr Martin said Mr O’Leary had been passionate about education and had made a significant contribution to creating learning opportunities for young people for whom conventional education did not always suit.

“He believed in the dignity of every individual, and the capacity of every individual to grow.

“I had met with Don on quite a number of occasions in respect of the Cork Life Centre, and in terms of the work done there,” Mr Martin said.

The Taoiseach – who, as minister for health and children, had opened the centre in 2001 - recalled spending “a very enjoyable and worthwhile” afternoon there in November, 2022.

“I’m a teacher myself at heart, and Don’s views resonated with my own in many respects.

“His contribution to the Cork Life Centre and to many, many young people was very, very positive, and he has left a significant legacy in that sense,” Mr Martin said.

A native of Ballyphehane, Mr O’Leary lived most of his life in Fairhill.

In 1987 he was jailed for five years in Portlaoise Prison for membership of the Provisional IRA, and he served three. He often said his real crime had been possession of Sinn Fein election posters, and he once told The Echo that while he had not actually been a member of the IRA when he went to prison, “I most certainly was when I came out”.

He was elected as a Sinn Féin councillor for the Cork city north-west ward in 1999. Contemporaries remember him as a firebrand who always spoke out the oppressed and the overlooked, raising in City Hall more than quarter of a century ago the plight of the people of Gaza.

Ill health forced him to stand down from the council in 2000 and he was replaced by future TD Jonathan O’Brien.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said she was very saddened to hear of Mr O’Leary’s passing.

“Don’s impactful work in the area of educational disadvantage helped many people,” she said.

“I want to express my sympathies to his family and friends at this time.” 

During Mr O’Leary’s time as director of the Life Centre, he grew its student body from five when he took over in 2006, to 55, and he expanded its curriculum and introduced Leaving Certificate subjects for those who wished to study them.

In 2022, after long and often fractious negotiations, and following several interventions by Mr Martin, Mr O’Leary hailed a deal that had been agreed with the Department of Education whereby nine of the centre’s staff would be given contracts by the department, a development Mr O’Leary said would secure the Life Centre’s future.

Though he never wavered from his politics as a socialist and a republican, he always said that Cork’s elected representatives of all persuasions had understood the importance of the Life Centre.

That was his true litmus test of anyone: whether they had the best interests of the young people of the Life Centre at heart.

In his wars with the Department of Education, Thomas Gould and Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire might have been his more natural political allies, but he often also praised politicians such as Mr Martin, former tánaiste Simon Coveney, current EU commissioner Michael McGrath, Fianna Fáil’s Pádraig O’Sullivan and Tony Fitzgerald, Dublin senator Lynn Ruane, and Wexford Fine Gael TD Paul Kehoe, among many others.

He held Fine Gael’s Colm Burke in especially high esteem, and he never forgot Mr Burke for getting him a break at a time when Mr O’Leary’s status as a former IRA prisoner rendered him politically radioactive and practically unemployable.

Never a man to put a tooth on a thing, he would say: “Colm has more of a social conscience than most of the leftwingers I know.” And then he would add the sting: “I’ll never understand why he’s a Blueshirt”.

In December 2023, Mr O’Leary resigned as director of the Life Centre, following a number of unresolved disputes with the centre’s board of trustees.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that he felt heartbroken to leave. Still, being the man he was, he stayed in touch with many of his former students and continued to be a presence in their lives. He loved them, and he was loved in return.

Rachel Lucey, who had worked as his deputy in the Life Centre, remained his great friend to the end.

In a statement, the Cork Life Centre said on Friday that its community was deeply saddened by Mr O’Leary’s passing.

“His impact on the centre and our young people, over the course of almost two decades in the role, was immense and his loss will be sincerely felt by all.

“The best way to honour Don’s work and contribution to the Cork Life Centre will be to keep doing what we've always done and being who we have always been.

“We remain committed to serving our young people with integrity and respect by providing a safe, holistic learning environment for our young people to pursue their right to an education and step into their full potential.

“The Centre will carry forward the legacy we have been given and do all we can to ensure the sustainability of this wonderful organisation into the future. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam.” 

In 2022, Mr O’Leary was presented with the Lord Mayor’s civic award for his work in education.

On Friday, Cork City Council said Mr O’Leary and the team at Cork Life Centre “ensured that young people facing challenges in their lives did not lose out on an education”.

“At a time when many young people felt left behind by mainstream education systems, Don stood firmly on the side of inclusion, compassion and possibility.” 

The Lord Mayor of Cork, councillor Fergal Dennehy, said Mr O’Leary was “fearless in his advocacy, often challenging authority with honesty and conviction".

“His legacy will endure not only in the centre he helped create, but in the lives transformed by his dedication.” 

In 2021, UCC presented Mr O’Leary with an honorary doctorate in recognition of his work at the Life Centre.

Mr O'Leary is survived by his wife Betty, their children Don and Eilis, and their beloved grandchildren, Daniel, James, Eoin, and Cian.

In December of 2021, when Mr O’Leary made public his diagnosis of terminal cancer, he told this reporter:

“If I had one wish for anyone, it would be to give them one day of the last 16 years of days that I have had in the Life Centre.” 

Mr O’Leary’s remains will repose at Coughlan’s Funeral Home, Shandon Street today, Saturday, from 10am to 4pm and on Sunday from 1pm, with his family in attendance at 3pm and prayers at 4pm.

Requiem Mass on Monday, October 6 at 11am in the Church of the Resurrection, Farranree, and funeral afterwards to St Michael’s Cemetery, Blackrock.