DR CLAIRE CARNEY, who died on October 2nd, was the first woman to be appointed to the position of Faculty Dean in the history of UCD. Born on May 23rd, 1927, she was a life-long resident of Prince Edward Terrace in Blackrock, Co Dublin. She was educated at Sion Hill Junior and Senior Schools, going on to study French and English at UCD.
Having been conferred with her BA degree in 1948, she continued her studies in UCD and was conferred with a diploma in social science in 1949.
She was then accepted by the Institute of Almoners as a candidate for training as an almoner. This necessitated a move to England, and in the course of her training, Claire worked in St Thomas’s Hospital in London and in the Radcliffe in Oxford.
She qualified as an almoner in 1951 and returned to Dublin to take up a position in the social work department of the Mater Hospital, Dublin where she worked for the next 10 years, taking on increasing responsibilities.
In 1961 the National Medical Rehabilitation Centre was founded in Dún Laoghaire, and Claire was asked to establish and oversee the social work department of the new hospital. She remained there as senior social worker for a number of years until her career took a different path.
In 1968 the department of social science in UCD was planning the first professional training course in Ireland for social workers. Claire was invited to take charge of the course. This was the beginning of a long academic career within the department of social science in UCD, culminating in her appointment as dean of the faculty of philosophy and sociology in 1991.
During her time in UCD she published many papers on different aspects of Irish social policy. She wrote her doctoral thesis on selectivist social services in the Republic of Ireland, including an evaluation of the selectivist system as a whole, and was conferred with a PhD in 1978.
In the course of her career, Claire served on many review bodies and committees concerned with shaping Irish social policy. For many years she was monthly correspondent for Ireland to the directorate general for employment and social affairs of the EC.
Following her retirement from UCD, Claire continued to serve on several committees and boards, but sadly her failing eyesight prevented her from being able to contribute to them as much as she would have liked, and she found it necessary to resign from them. Many other of Claire’s interests, which included travel, bridge and of course her beloved cottage in Kerry, also had to be curtailed, as her eyesight disimproved and her health failed.
In recent years, she lived in the kind care of Belmont Nursing Home in Stillorgan, where she died peacefully last month. She will be very much missed by her sisters Edie and Joan, by her nieces and nephews to whom she was always a most loving aunt, and by all her extended family and friends. She was pre-deceased by three sisters and a brother.