Ronan O’Brien is a fresh- faced, smiling, happy-go- lucky 27-year-old sitting beside his girlfriend, Lisa Dunbar, who clearly adores him, in a cafe in central Dublin.
It’s a few days before deployment to the Golan Heights, where today, as Lieut O’Brien, known to his colleagues simply as OB, he is commander of 2 Platoon in Undof’s Force Reserve Company, with responsibility for the 31 colleagues who serve under him.
“I met Ronan on St Patrick’s Day,” says Lisa cheerily. “Caught him looking at me from across the room!” That was six years ago at a party.
Lisa, a buyer’s assistant with Dunnes Stores, has a flat in Rathgar, but Ronan has spent much of recent years “living out of my car”, as she puts it, rattling between Finner Camp in Donegal and other Defence Forces bases such as Curragh Camp and Kilkenny, and the Rathgar flat
Soldiers on overseas missions get extra pay, ranging between about €70 and €100 a day, depending on rank, and so this mission is a chance to salt away funds for a home together.
“It’s about starting our lives together,” says Lisa.
“You know about this?” I ask O’Brien.
“I’ve been told once or twice . . .” he says grinning.
She looks forward to when they are living together, thereby minimising the disruptive impact of army life on their lives together.
O’Brien’s father was a commandant in the infantry and an uncle was in ordnance. “When I got to sixth year [in school] it was kind of ‘what do I do next?’ I did well in my Leaving Cert and all that, and Dad said ‘go for the cadets – if you get it, you get it; if you don’t, you don’t’, and so I said I’ll give it a go.
“The CAO for chemical engineering in Cork came on a Wednesday and I got the Army offer on the Thursday, I actually rang my uncle and I got his advice, and he said ‘you know, I’ve never had a bad day in the Army, I’ve really enjoyed it’.”
O’Brien took the advice and says he hasn’t really looked back since.
The Army sent him to college anyway and he did mechanical engineering at NUI Galway. “I probably wouldn’t have joined the Army if I couldn’t go to college. College would have been right on my agenda. So to be able to do both was brilliant.”
I ask Lisa about the news when Ronan’s away – the run-of-the-mill diet of bad news from Syria. Will she worry? How will she cope? She places her faith in Ronan’s ability and training, and in the Irish and UN authorities to look after him.
“The hardest part for me is not being able to be there, to be involved in his life,” she says.
She knows he’ll go overseas again and in the meantime, maybe they’ll get that home together. She’d love to live in north Wicklow.
And saying goodbye?
“Stop! Don’t even go there,” says Lisa.
Ronan munches into some hummus. Always getting mission ready.
My Mission Lt Ronan O’Brien Commander, 2nd Platoon
