Renie Agar: Renie Agar practised medicine under her maiden name of Binchy and was well known to a generation for her work in adult psychiatry, counselling and marriage guidance.
By the time she qualified as a doctor in 1968, she had already decided to go into psychiatry and after her intern year in St Vincent's hospital in Dublin, she worked in St Brendan's and St Loman's before joining Cluain Mhuire Family Centre in Blackrock, which had been set up under the mantle of the St John of God Brothers.
This was a time of great change and expansion in psychiatry, a time when old taboos were being broken and when the family became more and more involved in the care of the patient. She always admired the work that was done in the family centre and particularly value the fact that the psychiatrists worked as part of a team rather than individually.
Renie Binchy had a small private practice and could have had an enormous one but preferred to work with the health board where the service was available to all. Her practical common sense approach and calming tone reassured hundreds of patients who always regarded her as a friend rather than a therapist and who were heartbroken when she wrote to them all individually two years ago saying that she could no longer continue her work and suggesting other people that they might see.
In her home life she was extremely happy and content and lived out in practice all the principles that she believed in, which were a combination of optimism, practicality and good humour.
She married Victor Agar 36 years ago and they had one son, William, and many close good friends. Renie was also very close to her two sisters Maeve and Joan and her brother William; they all lived within a mile of each other and saw each other often.
In latter years she served as a medical adviser to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, a body set up by the Government to look into institutional abuse. To those who were with her through her long, painful illness she was an inspiration and a role model. Complaint and self-pity never existed in her vocabulary.
But she wanted no admiration or praise. And those who knew her anywhere along the line will find it easy to imagine her voice saying firmly: "You've just got to get on with it, that's all."
She got on with it so very well, for herself and for all who loved her.
Renie Binchy: born November 14th, 1944; died January 12th, 2008