Unsung Hero 2025: Prof. Humphrey O'Connor
This is a slightly shortened version of the citation for the Unsung Hero Award, delivered at the 37th Offaly Person of the Year Awards, hosted by the Offaly Association (Dublin) in the Bridge House Hotel in Tullamore
The award recipient, though not a native of the Faithful County, has made a huge contribution to Offaly in the field of medicine and in his community and voluntary work with the Offaly Hospice Foundation, stretching right back to the group's formation in 1990. A native of Cahirciveen in county Kerry, his family were shopkeepers with his mother working as a nurse, a role which no doubt inspired his future career. He graduated from University College Dublin in 1977. Following a period as an intern in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin and Cavan General Hospital, he continued his studies in Britain before taking up a post as Senior Registrar in Birmingham in 1984. In 1989, the Unsung Hero of Offaly secured a position at Tullamore General Hospital, where he remained until 2002 before taking an academic route, eventually becoming a senior lecturer.
He retired from clinical practice in 2023. He still regularly pens academic papers which are published in prestigious medical journals. Through his work in Tullamore, he and other like-minded people, who saw a glaring need for end of life care in the county, founded Offaly Hospice in 1990. We saw patients "crying and dying behind curtains", he now recalls, and this inspired the fledging group of volunteers, most from a medical background, to take action.
The group introduced community and home-based care and also established the first specialist hospice room in the old hospital in Tullamore to cater for patients and their families.
"The generosity of people is unbelievable and we have received fantastic support from the local community," the award recipient stresses pointing to the Harriers Hospice Mile on Christmas Day, the annual golf weekend at Tullamore golf club and many other fund-raisers in all corners of the county. Over the years, Offaly Hospice has donated millions of euro in funding for palliative care services to the Health Service Executive, and previously the Midland Health Bord. Offaly Hospice has an agreement with the HSE to provide an annual contribution and in that way support the work of the local community-based palliative care services in so many different ways - night nursing, complementary therapies, specialist children’s resources, bereavement pathway, training and education etc.
In 2025, Offaly Hospice separately provided funds to both refurbish the Palliative Care Suite in Ofalia House, Edenderry, and enable an extensive upgrade of the garden and outdoor space adjoining the Palliative Care Suite at Birr Community Nursing Unit. In 2019, Offaly Hospice, with four other hospice groups in the Midlands, launched the campaign to have a hospice for the region. The campaign was a success but Offaly Hospice are disappointed at the controversy concerning the site of the development in Tullamore and that no blocks are on the ground almost seven years later.
As such, the community-based home care team is all the more important at this time while we await developments in plans for the much-needed Midlands Regional Hospice earmarked for Tullamore.
The 2025 Unsung Hero of Offaly is the current Chairman of Offaly Hospice and remains committed to its ethos and looks forward to the completion of the long-awaited Midlands Hospice.