President Higgins attended a requiem mass for Sally O’Neill.
Before attending the requiem mass for Sally O’Neill, President Higgins met her former colleagues at Trócaire.
Sally O’Neill joined Trócaire in 1978, and over the following four decades she was involved in human development and human rights in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. As part of her efforts to draw attention to the gross abuses of human rights in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, she led an Oireachteas delegation - which included then Labour Party TD Michael D. Higgins and Niall Andrews of Fianna Fáil - to El Salvador in 1982. In the 1990s she also accompanied President Mary Robinson and then TD Michael D. Higgins on visits through famine affected Somalia.
President Higgins maintained a close friendship with O’Neill, and her retirement was marked by a special luncheon party at Áras an Uachtaráin.
You can read President Higgins’ tribute to Sally O’Neill here.
