Former national president recalls days of the ICA’s ‘Meath mafia’

Former national president of the Irish Countrywomen's Association, Camilla Hannon of Kiltale, recalled her memories of her time as president at a dinner in Knightsbrook Hotel, Trim, during the association's annual meeting.

"A new guild was being formed of the ICA in Kiltale in November 1970 and I went along to make up the numbers and ended up as president," she said

"I was very lucky to have great officers, Margaret Reynolds was secretary and is still a member at 92. There is only two of us left of that original bunch. Our members were and are fantastic and were very supportive and talented. We had 30 members, took part in every competition. Some were marvellous craftswomen and were happy to pass on their skills to us all. May Quinn played the accordion and wrote plays and sketches that we took part in. Deirdre Ryan won the Calor Kosangas National Housewife of the Year. We also wrote a history of Kiltale which was funded by Meath Leader.

"When I finished my three years as president I became a VCO - voluntary country organiser - for three years and I enjoyed that very much.

In 1976, Camilla was elected Meath Federation president. She looked back at the great fundraising for a mammography unit for Navan Hospital.

"A resolution was proposed by Ellen Collins and Mary Crowley from Batterstown Guild about breast cancer. Over the years we had lost a lot of good women to breast cancer and we knew there was a mammography machine that could detect the cancer at an early stage, and that gave women a better chance of survival.

So we decided to write to the Minister of Health asking him to fund a machine for Navan hospital, together with 5,000 signatures that we had collected through the guilds and families. When we got a negative reply, we made a decision to raise the money ourselves - over £100,000, big money in 1976, pounds not punts.

Each guild said they would do a function to raise the cash and the Federation would look for sponsorship from the community and support from businesses. After a lot of hard work we got it together only to be told that we had to pay a tax of £9,000 on top of that. The next big problem was that the HSE said we would have to pay for the staff to work it.

Now we absolutely refused to agree to that stipulation. We negotiated with personnel in the HSE for months. Eventually we were invited to a meeting with all the parties concerned in Leinster House and after hours of negotiations we got the OK. But we still had to pay the £9,000 tax.

We did succeed in getting that tax removed for all future gifts of medical equipment in the following budget but it wasn’t retrospective."

Meath Federation brought forward a resolution for the Protection of the Family Home Act which was also passed and became law. Camilla was elected national president in 1979, the third national president from Meath.

"I knew I couldn’t have taken over this honour without the support of my husband Joe, my mother and my five children on the home front and I decided that I would travel home every night regardless of distance or time because the family would see me in the morning before they went to school. I was given a Diatsu car to drive and I loved it.

There was 92,000 miles on it when I finished as president and ink wasn’t dry on the cheque when my son wrote it off! Thankfully no one was badly hurt. Camila was national president during the silver jubilee of An Grianan in Louth, the first adult education college in Ireland, supported by the Kellog Foundation.

At the Triennial Conference in Hamburg, Germany during her presidency, she was elected to four committees but resigned from two of them because of work load. She remained on the United Nations Committee and the Triennial Committee.

"At one stage Meath ICA had Kitty Harlin as national president, I was national secretary, Dorothy Gillett was treasurer, Rosarie Fitzsimons, Leinster vice president and we were all from Meath - we were called the 'Meath mafia'!"