Cork's Don O'Leary 'spent his life building bridges’

Whether or not Cork City Council makes an exception to its rules and allows a bridge to be named after the late Don O’Leary, his son is certain of one thing: “My dad would have absolutely hated this”.

The former director of the Cork Life Centre was never comfortable in the spotlight, accepting accolades with the greatest of reluctance, and then only to promote the centre.

His son, Don Jr, says his father “would have never stopped giving out” about a campaign by some of his former students to have one of Cork’s newest pedestrian bridges named after him.

Still, he concedes, his dad believed passionately in empowering young people and helping them to find their own voices, so, “he has no one to blame but himself”, he laughed.

Don O’Leary served for more than 18 years as director of the Cork Life Centre on Winter’s Hill in Sunday’s Well. During that time, working with a volunteer-led staff, he helped provide one-to-one, relationship-based tuition to hundreds of young Cork people failed by Ireland’s mainstream education system.

Saved lives 

He gave a future to countless young people who had been written off by the system, spending months and years restoring self-belief to teenagers who had been told they were worthless. He quite literally saved the lives of several of his young charges.

Mr O’Leary received several honours for his work, and he accepted them as a sort of devil’s bargain. He hated to be centre stage, preferring to focus on the young people of the Life Centre, but he sacrificed his own natural reserve to publicise the centre.

In 2022, the then lord mayor of Cork, councillor Colm Kelleher, presented him with the Lord Mayor’s Civic Award, but Mr O’Leary insisted on receiving it on Winter’s Hill, becoming the first person to be granted the honour outside of City Hall.

The year before that, he received an honorary doctorate in education from UCC. Those who loved him delighted afterward in calling him “Doctor”, to his fury.

When he accepted that doctorate, he admitted that when he had completed his Leaving Cert, he would have loved to have been a teacher.

“Given the times and the fact that I was the eldest of 11 siblings, that wasn’t on the cards,” he said.

He eventually resumed his education via the Open University on what he called “a long holiday” he took in Portlaoise.

“Then I was lucky enough to land in UCC as a mature student, where I studied youth and community work, a very enriching experience.”

That “long holiday” was courtesy of the minister for justice, when, in 1987, Mr O’Leary was jailed for five years for membership of the Provisional IRA, serving three. He often said his real crime had been possession of Sinn Féin election posters.

Ill Health

A Ballyphehane native who lived most of his life in Fairhill, he was elected a Sinn Féin councillor for the Cork city North-West ward in 1999, but ill health forced him to stand down in 2000.

During his time as director of the Life Centre, he grew its student body from five in 2006, to 55, expanding the centre’s curriculum and introducing Leaving Certificate subjects.

In December of 2021, when Mr O’Leary made public his diagnosis of terminal cancer, he told The Echo: “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.”

He passed away last October at the age of 68.

At the time, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin, said of Mr O’Leary: “He believed in the dignity of every individual, and the capacity of every individual to grow.

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

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 recent weeks, some of his former students have campaigned for Cork City Council to name the new Proby’s Quay pedestrian bridge after him, even though nominees for such honours usually, by city council convention, have to be dead for more than 20 years.

Another consideration for some of those young people is that their former mentor might not have welcomed such an honour.

“He’d have killed us!” laughed Darcy Faye, who graduated from the Life Centre in 2018 and now has a degree in youth and community work.

“He’d be so annoyed with us, but the thing with Don is he always encouraged us to find our own voices, so he couldn’t say anything about us now speaking up for him.”

She says this would be a way to show Mr O’Leary’s widow Betty, his children Don Jr and Eilis, and his former deputy director Rachel Lucey, just how much he meant to his former students.

Bridge to education

Mr O’Leary had, she says, offered so many young people a bridge to education and greater confidence it would be appropriate that his name be remembered on a bridge in the city he loved.

“Don was all about empowering young people to find their voice and to stand up for what they believe in, and we believe that Don is someone who helped so many of us, he shouldn’t be forgotten.”

Former Life Centre student Amber O’Callaghan has just completed her post-graduate degree as a special needs assistant, and she said Mr O’Leary was her “guardian angel” who helped her through trauma and gave her hope for life.

“Don always called us his legacy, and he will live on through us, but I think it’s also important to have somewhere the people of Cork can go to remember him,” she said.

“Don deserves that recognition and I think it’s the least Cork can do for someone who has saved so many lives.”

William Cooper says that in his time in the Life Centre, “Don was the bridge between me and my untapped potential” and he feels that Mr O’Leary’s family deserve to see him recognised once more by the city.

“Don spent his life building bridges and I feel it would be fitting to name a bridge after him, especially one coming from the southside like Don did,” he said.

Don O’Leary Jr has no doubt about how his father would have felt.

“He would have gone mad at them for doing this, but he would have been so proud of the fine young people they are. Even if this goes nowhere, the effort that his past pupils have put into this is all the tribute that he would want.”

A Cork City Council spokesperson said a public consultation process was currently ongoing.

They said a person being nominated should have been born or lived in Cork and should have made “a unique and outstanding contribution to the life or history of Cork through outstanding achievement, distinctive service, or significant community contribution”.

“Proposals to commemorate living persons are not generally encouraged,” they added.

“Nominees should be deceased —preferably at least 20 years previously or have passed the centenary of their birth whichever is earlier.”

However, an exception to those guidelines can be considered by the council “if deemed appropriate”.

The deadline for submissions of nominations is January 26, 2026.