Peggy O'BrienPeggy O'Brien, who died on July 14th, was a daughter of Seán and Kathleen Lemass, who inherited from her father (Taoiseach 1959-66) a keen interest in politics and current affairs, especially Northern Ireland.
Born on May 25th, 1926, she was christened Margaret, and was the second of the family's three daughters. The others were her younger sister Sheila, who predeceased her, and her older sister Maureen, now Mrs CJ Haughey.
She was also predeceased by her brother, Noel, a former TD and Parliamentary Secretary. She was born into a family already totally committed to the hurly-burly of politics in the post-Civil War period. The year after her birth, Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil for the first time.
There were also other, more domestic crises: at one stage, all three daughters contracted tuberculosis simultaneously.
Maureen spent a considerable time in hospital, and all three were nursed at home in Palmerston Road for long periods by their mother.
Encouraged by her father, whose own education had been dramatically abbreviated by the 1916 Rising and subsequent events, she followed her elder sister into University College, Dublin. There she took a degree in science as a preliminary to a teaching career.
Marriage to a young army officer, Jack O'Brien, in September 1954, and the subsequent births of her five children, precluded a full-time career, although she taught for some time on a part-time basis in the Institute of Education.
Jack O'Brien's own career - he rose to the rank of commandant and was aide-de-camp to Sean Lemass during the latter's period of office as Taoiseach - ensured that her own interest in public affairs remained undimmed, although it was never discussed outside the confines of her hospitable home.
It was some years after her father's death that she disclosed in a newspaper interview that Sean Lemass had, three years after his retirement, foreseen the bloodbath that the North would become.
More controversially, she also indicated that during his negotiations with other European leaders on Ireland's entry to the Common Market, he had succeeded in engaging the interest of mainland European leaders in contributing to pressure on Britain to help bring about a settlement. Jack Lynch, the Taoiseach who had completed these negotiations and was to retire more than a year later, said that he had been unaware of any initiative by his predecessor in this regard.
She was predeceased by her husband Jack, who died in 1999, and is survived by her sister Maureen and by her five sons Donal, Eoghan, Pádraig, Seán and Liam.
Peggy O'Brien: born May 25th, 1926; died July 14th.