Grainne O'Flynn made an impression on everybody who knew her. Most of her many friends remember how they first met her. They will also remember how they came to hear of her all too early death after a short illness on the morning of Sunday, August 5th at the age of 65.
It was the world of education that best knew Grainne. She was a member of the M.Ed. class at Trinity in 1971, a class that contained many other prominent and well-known educationists. She was 34 at the time, but had already raised three daughters, taken a philosophy degree at UCD, and made a career in Aer Lingus - something that in those days seemed very glamorous.
She had met Paddy O'Flynn when he was an engineering student in UCD and married him in 1960. In characteristic manner she issued invitations to their 40th anniversary party last year with a slip that read: "Come to 101 Leinster Road next Thursday and marvel at Grainne and Paddy being together and in love for 40 years!"
After she graduated, Grainne remained in the Trinity education department for seven years. She loved Trinity and gained much, she felt, from her teachers there and from her students. She certainly gave a lot back. But in the late 1970s universities were contracting; budgets were being cut, temporary staff were being let go and there was little chance that new contracts would be issued.
In 1980 Grainne became director of the development education project under the joint management of the Irish Council of Churches and the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. This was committed and sustained activism - addressing meetings, visiting schools, lobbying, commissioning textbooks.
She made her own wonderful contribution to that project when the O'Brien Press published her World Survival in 1984. In its conclusion she reaffirmed the faith that had grown under the guidance of Fergal O'Connor at UCD in the late 1960s. The only purpose of the book - indeed of any good book, she would say - was to raise questions and thereby lead to a "quickening" of understanding.
Grainne left Booterstown in 1984 to become education/research officer of the Teacher's Union of Ireland. The union had decided that, with the proposed establishment of the Curriculum and Examinations Board (CEB), it was likely to be concerned with significant developments in second-level education and a full-time officer with specific expertise specifically in that field.
Grainne was an inspired choice for the job. Not only was she a recognised authority in the area, but just as she joined the TUI she was appointed in her own right to the CEB by the Minister for Eduction, Gemma Hussey.
She brought to the TUI all her great energy, political sensibility and social convictions. She was very proud to be an employee of what she regarded as the most socially committed of the teacher trade unions.
Her role with the TUI was intended to be temporary, but such was both the pace of educational development and Grainne's contribution to this within the union that the appointment lasted for 10 years. She will be long remembered at the TUI for a series of reports that she wrote or initiated, including important papers on remedial education, guidance, health education and equality. She helped to moulding the union into a force in educational thinking and policy-making, as well as in day-to-day trade union issues.
She was highly respected by many in the Department of Education who looked to her advice and views. In act and spirit she constantly reminded her colleagues of what needed to be done before all the children of the nation might feel cherished equally. Thus there were many who were shocked when, much too early, Grainne retired in 1994.
Grainne's grandchildren, Louis, Fiadh and Oscar, soon became the centre of her attention, to some extent replacing her various political and social worlds.
Grainne is survived by her husband, Paddy, her three daughters, Cliona, Sunniva and Dervilla, and her sister Bairbre.
J.L.