A dynamic and far-seeing national president of the Irish Countrywomen's Association

OBITUARY: Kitty Harlin, Kilmessan

A month's memory Mass takes place in Kilmessan on Sunday next for Kitty Harlin, the former national president of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA) who went on to lead the confederation of family organisations in Europe.

Mrs Harlin died peacefully in the Care Choice Nursing Home in Trim on 22nd January last, in her 96th year.

A founding member of the Scurlogstown ICA guild in the 1960s, she went on to be one of the association’s most high profile national presidents and was a woman far ahead of her time with her views during her term of office.

Early involvement in the first Scurlogstown Olympiad festivals and the founding of the Scurlogstown guild were her first steps into community activities and organisations. She was president of the Scurlogstown Guild from 1973 to ’76, and was elected Meath Federation president from 1979 to 1981. Even then, she was progressive, urging members to attend a course on public speaking at the Lady of Sion Conference Centre at Bellinter House in 1981.

She followed in the footsteps of association founder, Lady Elizabeth Fingal of Killeen Castle, and her close friend and near neighbour, Camilla Hannon of the Kiltale Guild, in serving as national president from 1988 to 1991. Bea Trench of Slane also served as national president.

Kitty had been vice-president in Leinster (1982 -’85), which involved opening new guilds and lobbying government ministers on social and consumer affairs, and chairperson of the national executive in 1986. She was appointed to the board of ACOT and represented ICA on the Consumer Committee in Brussels.

Issues she campaigned for included the Erasmus educational exchange initiatives in Europe, and the lobbying of successive governments to enact the Family Home Act giving inheritance rights to spouses.

In her acceptance address as president in Kilkenny in 1988, she said that “too many people feel they have little in common with the centralised bureaucratic structures of today’s Ireland. They feel marginalised and forgotten.”

She urged ICA members to do all they could to recreate that caring community so badly needed in the Ireland of today.

Later in her term, at an ICA national council meeting in Sligo, she queried the criteria of the State appointments system, asking why organisations like ICA were not considered when new bodies like Teagasc or the Independent Radio and Television Commission were being set up.

She also said that instead of moaning amongst themselves about poor goods and services, ICA members should tackle the manufacturers and providers and complain to them.

She called on ICA members to monitor urban and rural development, and to study and discuss local authority development plans for their areas.

And in a statement which resonates even today, in light of recent events, she said “No woman in 1988 should hesitate to complain about sexual harassment or to seek legal redress.”

That year, she also led a delegation to China, at the invitation of that country’s women’s federation, and was seen off by the Chinese Ambassador at the Dublin Airport. A diary of her trip was published in instalments in Meath Chronicle, where she wrote on one day of having to make four speeches, “and make many toasts, which was customary.”

One instalment, headlined ‘One Child Per Family’ was about ‘family planning plus a visit to a Catholic Cathedral’ – a certain irony.

In 1991, she pioneered the ICA Counselling Service to give members and their families in every county access to counselling for the price of a local call.

In another far-seeing initiative, Kitty forged links with the Women’s Institute of Northern Ireland, in an event attended by then President Mary Robinson, and her own Scurlogstown ICA Guild maintained the link in a twinning arrangement with a branch of the institute from Knockagh in Antrim.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when ICA was a more influential organisation that it is today, it had established links with many European organisations, in the run up to European integration in 1992. Following her term as national president, Kitty Harlin went on to be elected president of COFACE - the Confederation of Family Organisations in the European Community, the first person from outside the major European countries to hold the role, overseeing 90 organisations across member states, all with different issues and needs.

In an interview with the Meath Chronicle on her 90th birthday in August 2016, she spoke of the interesting period it was as she travelled across Europe from the Paris-headquartered organisation.

“Different states were adapting to new borders and structures,” she said. “There were very poor countries at the time, with very poor living conditions.”

It was a huge commitment and challenge, and during that time Mrs Harlin was also a founder member, vice-president and spokesperson for the International Year of the Family.

As president of the Associated Countrywomen of the World, she was awarded a special UN Testimonial for her “exemplary support to the United Nations Programme during the International Year of the Family 1994.”

Upon hearing of the passing of Kitty Harlin, COFACE paid tribute, saying: “Kitty is part of COFACE and Europe’s DNA. Her legacy is of great importance and felt today more than ever as we advocate the rights of families and for gender equality”.

In 1998, she was a dynamic chairperson of the Meath People in Need RTE Telethon committee, when over €100,000 was raised in one of the most successful county campaigns, with the theme ‘What’s raised in Meath, stays in Meath’.

Born in Easkey, Co Sligo, Kitty Feeney’s family came to Cardiffstown, Kilmessan, when she was about 10 years old. She went to school in the village, then to St Joseph’s Convent of Mercy in Navan.

Her grandmother had friends who were retired nurses from Leeds Infirmary in England, and she went over there to train as a nurse, working for four years. She returned to a job at Navan Hospital, but she wasn’t happy there as she felt the standards were not the same as had been in Leeds, so she changed careers, working with her sister, Rosario, in her hairdressing business in Trimgate Street in the town.

In 1957, she married Asigh farmer, Michael Harlin, and they eventually set up their family home and farm at Finglaghstown House, on the Trim-Dublin home, where they brought up their family.

Heartbreak was to come with the sudden death of daughter, Rosanna Murphy, in 1999, and Kitty was also predeceased by her husband, Michael; brother, Thomas; and sister, Lily Hayes.

She is survived by her sons, Maurice and Michael; grandchildren, Daire, Aoibheann, Jessica, Jamie, Harry, Conor and Grainne; brothers, Paddy and Michael; sisters, Sr Marie Patrice (Imelda), Rosario Fitzsimons and Carmel Campion; daughters-in-law, Pam and Audrey; son-in-law Pat, nieces, nephews, extended family and friends.

The current national president of the ICA, Hilda Roche, joined Meath federation president, Liz McCormack, in leading a guard of honour at as the funeral arrived in Kilmessan.

“Kitty was an inspiration to so many of us coming up through ICA over the years and was a committed advocate for women over many years,” Meath ICA said in a social media post.