Obituary: Kay O’Loughlin Kennedy

Kay O'Loughlin Kennedy, co-founder with her husband John of the NGO that is now known as Concern Worldwide, has died aged 77. "By opening her door and her home," she helped bring about the launch of Concern, said its current chief executive, Dominic MacSorley, who described what she and her husband did as an example of "ordinary people doing extraordinary things".

Frances O’Keefe, a former Concern volunteer and board member, said she was “very inspiring” and was a strong advocate and supporter of the role of women in the organisation and that she placed great emphasis on the importance of education for women at home and abroad.

O’Loughlin Kennedy was raised in Palmerston Gardens, Rathmines, Dublin 6, the daughter of Patrick Banahan, a hardware retailer from Roscommon and Frances Winston, a drapery assistant also from Roscommon. She attended primary and secondary school at Muckross Park College where she captained the senior hockey team. She remained very attached to her Dominican heritage.

Public response

She was one of the original staff of the Voluntary Health Insurance (VHI) Board when it opened for business in 1957, rising to become its first female underwriter and later staff welfare officer. When she married John O’Loughlin Kennedy in 1966, she resigned from the VHI. After a short time in London, where he worked for the Economist Intelligence Unit, they returned to live in an apartment on Northumberland Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.

They were made aware of the developing famine in Biafra by John's brother, Fr Raymond Kennedy CSSp, one of the first to penetrate the besieged area from outside. They called a meeting in their home of people with west African experience to see what they could do about the famine; to their surprise, 35 people of different denominations responded. A series of meetings followed and Africa Concern was launched, with John as honorary secretary and Kay as volunteer company secretary.

Africa Concern joined with a group formed by Vincent Grogan, Supreme Knight of the Knights of St Columbanus, and a volunteer committee undertook a media campaign. In June 1968, the Catholic and Anglican bishops of Owerri (Nigeria) jointly launched the campaign, making ecumenical history as it was the first time a Catholic and Anglican bishop had spoken on a shared platform in Dublin.

The Irish public response was extraordinary; five large ships were chartered to bring vitally needed supplies to the Joint Church Aid airlift that broke the blockade of Biafra. Within 30 months, by the end of the Biafran conflict, Africa Concern had raised and spent £3.5 million (equivalent to €65 million today).

WB Yeats

Kay’s natural diplomacy and the office procedures and people-management skills she had honed in the VHI proved invaluable as huge numbers of volunteers came forward. Her voluntary supervision lasted for 10 years until the organisation’s headquarters moved from her home, eventually acquiring its own building on Camden Street, Dublin. She remained closely associated with Concern all her life.

She had been an accomplished hockey player in her youth and later took up golf, serving as treasurer, secretary and finally captain of Foxrock Golf Club. She was also very involved in her local Blackrock Credit Union and in the Irish League of Credit Unions.

A particular passion was the poetry of WB Yeats, in which she took several courses, and she acted as a volunteer guide at the long-running Yeats exhibition at the National Library of Ireland.

Twenty members of the Biafran community in Ireland attended her funeral dressed in traditional costume. “We came here because she was our mother too and we would not be standing here if you and your wife had not done what you did, because our mothers would not have lived,” they told her husband.

She is survived by John, her brother Pat, son Paul, daughter-in-law Alva and granddaughters Sophie and Alice.