A snapshot of Dunmore

By Mary Ryan

IT WAS back to my roots when I visited Dunmore on August 2 and had my dinner in the middle of the day in the wonderful Pantry Café. What a surprise I got to learn that the café was there through the benevolence of a one-time neighbour of mine in Eyre Square, Galway when I was growing up.
In 2006 Miss O’Connell (she was Maureen but we never knew that) left a 15-bedroom premises with pub to the Vincent de Paul (SVP). After a bit of family rancour with the usual suspects (solicitors and barristers) getting a good chunk of the money, the SVP got €8 million to be spent in Galway city and county “for the relief of the poor” as stipulated in Maureen’s will.
Mary Jessop grew up in Dunmore as Mary Mullin, became a nurse and worked in England from 1968 to 1994, including in the London Irish Centre where, she told me, she was part of a team called the díon (shelter) workers. There she worked with older homeless Irish immigrants and brought that experience home to Dunmore when she returned with her husband Alan 19 years ago. There are so many parts to Mary but here she is the Director of Dunmore Enterprise and Coordinator of the Pantry Café.

Read the full feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald