Bairbre Lonergan:BAIRBRE LONERGAN, who has died suddenly at the age of 28, was the Co Kilkenny businesswoman who founded CliC Eyewear Ireland Ltd – the company which imports and distributes the distinctive Californian glasses which have become fashionable in recent years.
A native of Graiguenamanagh, she came from a well-known medical family.
Her father, mother, sister, an aunt and two uncles are doctors, as were her four grand-uncles. Her late maternal grandfather, Dr William (Bill) Tierney, established one of the southeast’s best-known general practices after returning to Ireland from the second World War having served with the Royal Air Force and survived incarceration by the Japanese, under appalling conditions, at a prisoner-of-war camp in Java.
Lonergan graduated with a degree in law from Portobello College followed by post-graduate studies at the Dublin Business School.
She found an outlet for her entrepreneurial skills by spotting the potential demand in Ireland for the latest innovation in eyewear from America – CliC reading glasses, which are worn around the neck and designed to magnetically snap closed with a click when required. As she often explained, once users tried the simple but ingenious design, they were hooked. She travelled throughout Ireland developing a network of retailers – mainly pharmacies and opticians – to stock the glasses and was also well-known at trade fairs and exhibitions.
She was an immensely popular, vivacious, good-humoured and witty young woman.
Fond of sport, she regularly travelled to hurling matches at Croke Park with her father (she cheering for Kilkenny; he, for his native Tipperary) and was proud to have helped her alma mater, the Ursuline Convent school in Thurles, to win a first Munster junior championship hockey title by famously saving a last-minute penalty.
She had recently developed an interest in organic gardening. Fruits from her first crop of tomatoes were brought to the altar at her funeral Mass.
Lonergan died suddenly in Dublin after returning from a short holiday in Spain.
Speaking after Requiem Mass at Duiske Abbey, her aunt and godmother Patricia Tierney, observing that many people in the huge congregation were wearing “those glasses”, asked them to “click for Bairbre” one last time. And they did.
She is survived by her parents Val and Marian, sister Róis, brother Bill, grandmother Teresa Tierney and extended family.
Bairbre Lonergan, born April 6th, 1982; died July 20th, 2010