A 66-year-old nun who founded a series of rehabilitation centres for people suffering from alcohol and drug addiction has been voted the Greatest Kerry Person of All Time by radio listeners in the county.
Sister Consilio Fitzgerald, of the Mercy order of nuns, founded the Cuan Mhuire addiction treatment centres in the late 1960s. In being voted winner, Sister Consilio beat some of the highest-profile names of three centuries into runner-up position.
Football manager and former Kerry footballer Mick O'Dwyer came third, while Antarctic explorer Tom Crean came second. In fifth place was "The Liberator", Daniel O'Connell, with former Tánaiste Mr Dick Spring in fourth. Behind these, in no order, were the late playwright John B. Keane, St Brendan the Navigator, Mr Denis Brosnan, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy and the late hotelier Mr Maurice O'Donoghue.
The Radio Kerry competition attracted 4,500 votes.
Born on the Kerry-Cork border, Sister Consilio's selection in the final 10 provoked controversy when it emerged that a development organisation in Cork was also claiming her as one of the greatest Cork persons of all time.
A 2004 calendar of "Women of Duhallow", by the development organisation IRD Duhallow, places Sister Consilio and her sister, Sister Agnes, firmly on the Cork side of the border as among the greatest Cork women, alongside women such as Alice Taylor.
Sister Consilio was born and grew up on a farm in Clough, Rockchapel, in the Duhallow region.
There were calls for her disqualification from the Kerry contest on grounds she was born on the Cork side.
Yesterday, one of the first things Sister Consilio did was dampen the speculation. "As far as I was concerned I was always from Brosna in Co Kerry. From now on, after this, I daren't be from anything but Brosna, Co Kerry." Growing up on the border means "you are spurred on", she said.