She had a gift for rallying the members of the INO who engaged, under her leadership, in numerous works-to-rule in protest not only at their own conditions but also at the conditions which patients had to endure, especially in accident and emergency departments. Her ability to rally the members was more than a gift - there was a good deal of hard work behind it and of experience, in her own career, of cutbacks.
After her election as president in May 2000, she visited all 42 branches of the INO within 16 months. That took grit and dedication from someone who enjoyed entertaining friends and relatives at her home in Carlow.
Her experience of cuts and closures began in the early 1980s when the midwifery service attached to the hospital in Carlow and which meant a great deal to her in her work, was closed down. The 1980s was a decade of cuts but the heaviest came in 1987. She saw seven long-stay hospitals in her health board area close within a matter of months.
By the early 1990s she was on the organisation's executive. She was a vice-president when the nurses strike began in October 1999 and was a stalwart supporter of that strike, which did more than bring about significant improvements for nurses. It changed their relationship to employers who realised they were a force to be reckoned with. Above all, it changed nurses' view of themselves.
It had not been easy for them to go on strike but they emerged stronger and unafraid to face into industrial disputes. It would be wrong to classify her as a militant. She believed there was a time and a place for action and was not afraid to face it when it was needed.
She was the daughter of John Spillane from Charleville, Co Cork, and Margaret Egan from Portlaoise. Her father worked on the railways, eventually becoming station master and so the family moved around, to Clonmel, Buttevant, Kildare, Kilkenny and Carlow.
She was born in Portlaoise but home was Kilkenny, where she went to the Presentation Convent secondary school, and Carlow, where she worked and lived for most of her life. She was the eldest in the family and had three sisters, Joan Marie, Margaret and Nuala, and one brother, Seán. She trained at Harefield Hospital in Middlesex. She also trained as a TB nurse. Her big interest was midwifery and it was in that capacity that she worked in the maternity service which had been established in Carlow in 1975.
Though the closure of that service was a blow to her, she remained in Carlow, working in the district hospital while deepening her involvement in the INO. She was very sociable and maintained an "open-door" policy at her home. By virtue of the fact that she had never married she, in effect, became the pivotal person in the family after her parents died.
Hers is quite a record of achievement for the district hospital nurse from Carlow to whom tributes have been pouring in from all over the world - and from bodies representing nurses in some of the most prestigious hospitals in the world - since she died.
• Claire Spillane: born August 10th, 1941; died June 29th, 2003.