Born: June 19th, 1939
Died: November 3rd, 2025
Sr Stanislaus “Stan” Kennedy was, according to Charles Haughey, the most intransigent woman he had ever met. Admittedly, he said that before he encountered Margaret Thatcher.
Then, in the late 1970s, Sr Stan was chair of an EU-funded National Committee on Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty in Ireland. It had taken a radical approach, setting up rural co-operatives while supporting projects for Travellers, the disabled and women.
Some of its members had a meeting with Haughey, then minister for health. He was not impressed and described what they were doing as “rubbish” and that we should “concentrate on doing meals on wheels and things like that”. Sr Stan interrupted him, “with respect, I don’t agree with you at all”.
He then “lambasted us all. He insisted what we were doing would go nowhere and that it was Marxist”, and added “as for you Sr Stanislaus, you are the most intransigent woman I’ve ever met”.
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