Born: January 4th, 1957
Died: April 1st, 2026
It was probably his friend and colleague of many years Liam Doran who put it best in a tribute to the late trade unionist David Hughes. “Dave was everything you could hope for in a friend and a colleague, a guiding light,” said Doran. He was “a gentleman, an absolute and utter gentleman who touched gently on the souls of everyone he met. He was also the best trade union intellect in this country of his generation”.
Both had led the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) for decades, Doran as general secretary, Hughes as deputy general secretary.
READ MORE
“The INMO could not have attempted to do and achieve what it did over those 20 years without the brains and the intellect, the loyalty and the solidarity that Dave Hughes showed to me.”
His death meant “I’ve lost a best friend. I’ve also lost a loyal colleague. He was an absolute superstar when it came to representing workers across this country over decades. There are thousands of people in Ireland today who have better pay and conditions because of the work, the commitment, the ingenuity, the brains, the intellect of Dave Hughes.” He was “a great believer in delivering public services through public’s servants who were properly paid”, he said.
But there was also life before the INMO where Hughes was concerned.
A Dublin man through and through, he was Clonsilla-born and bred and lived there for most of his 69 years. One of four children, with brother Michael and sisters Ann-Marie and Winnie, he was already something of an activist in his teens.
At 14, he took over the Clonsilla Youth Club and put new life into it so his peers would have somewhere to go and something to do. By then he had attended St Mochta’s National School and was a pupil at St Declan’s College in Cabra. It was while there he joined the Clonsilla Development Association and became manager of the St Mochta’s under-12s team.
Finishing secondary school at 18, he was soon working at CPI Euromix in Lucan, the local cement factory where his father Christy also worked. You might say it was there the young Hughes discovered his vocation as a trade unionist.
He found out that female colleagues at work were getting paid less than the men, so he organised his first strike. He was 19 and won that battle for equal pay for women. He became the shop steward at CPI Euromix and soon Liberty Hall came calling.
He was employed there by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), in which role he was an ardent supporter of the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikers in the 1980s and was one of the first Irish trade unionists to openly support LGBT rights.
Nor was Clonsilla forgotten in all of this. He started a festival there. Then, in 1985, he was recruited to work for the Local Government and Public Services Union (LGPSU), so he and his then wife Barbara and their daughter moved to Sligo where another daughter, Irene, was born. In his new role he travelled all over the west.
But Clonsilla was home and, three and a half years later, he and the family were back in Dublin where he worked with the Civil and Public Services Union (CPSU) for a time before being recruited by the Irish Municipal, Public and Civil Trade Union (Impact).
He and his wife had separated by then and it was through Impact he met Angela, who he later married, also becoming stepfather to Patrick. The couple’s son Christopher was born in 2003.
In 1998, Hughes was recruited to the INMO, the largest such union in Ireland and soon, though not himself a nurse, he broke the mould and rules had to be changed so he could becoming the union’s deputy general secretary, to Doran, its general secretary.
Within a year they had made history by taking the membership – nurse and midwives – out on strike, the first such strike in Ireland, and won increased pay and improved conditions. Under their leadership the INMO’s membership doubled to over 40,000.
In recent weeks, family members have been recalling how Hughes instilled in them “a strong work ethic, respect for others and courtesy”. Son Christopher, himself a nurse, said that “when I got my first job, he taught me the three rules of work: 1. Always look busy; 2. Never do your personal business in front of the customer; 3. Always make the customer think they’re right.”
It was also recalled how Hughes’s mother Maureen had instilled in her son the conviction that “you are better than no one and no one is better than you”. It was also said that it was from Maureen he “got his sharp wit, quick thinking and wicked sense of humour”.
Hughes’s daughter Freda said he “taught us to treat everyone equally, always reminding us that the people in the lowest paid jobs make the world go round. He fought for Traveller’s rights, women’s rights and LGBT rights all his life. He planted trees and did his recycling before it was cool. He always stood up for the underdog and intervened positively in so many people’s lives locally, nationally and globally. He made workers’ rights his vocation and actively worked towards a better world for all.”
Hughes retired in 2022 and within weeks was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. As that cruellest of diseases progressed, he would insist “my mind’s just fine, it’s my body that’s gone”.
