The tributes at his funeral Mass, both formal and informal, inside and outside the Chapel of St Brendan's Hospital, Grangegorman, by priest and people alike, were heart-warming as they recalled a life of great suffering, faithful friendship, immense goodwill, daily hard work, and infectious, and sometimes outrageous, humour. There was little to record of rancour, bad temper or other human blemishes. Who was this person ?
Paddy Sweeney's early life is shrouded in mystery. His obituary notice recorded that he never knew his family. He was born in 1943. His mother was Nora Sweeney with an address in the wealthy part of Monkstown, Co Dublin. Thy year 1947 found him placed in the care of a convent of sisters in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow. From there he was transferred to Artane in 1953. He spent six years in that institution and in 1959 was placed by the Christian Brothers as a labourer on a farm near Ballinasloe. His residence in that place was a shed.
After several unsuccessful efforts to abscond, he succeeded and came to Dublin to work on a succession of Crampton building sites, but damage to his back in an on-site accident ended his capacity for heavy work.
Rehabilitation support from St Michael's House eventually brought him to Gurteen Agricultural College in Tipperary for a home and whatever work of which he might prove capable. He materialised as a God-sent gift for the cleaning care of hall and changing-rooms during the week and the public areas of the college at weekends. For relaxation he watched television with the rest of the staff and visited the Glue Pot in Ballingarry. The geographical isolation of the college and a change of management style convinced Paddy that the time had come for him to move on.
After an enforced spell in the County Home in Clonmel, he ended up in Dublin in a series of unsatisfactory flats in neighbourhoods where the emerging vultures of a growing drug culture preyed on the innocents. Eventually he found benevolent privacy in a place in the Arran Quay area of Dublin 7, but not before making two efforts at suicide in the Liffey. Those made it easy to conclude that he suffered from some kind of mental illness and he was referred to St Brendan's. That place, so historically despised, became his life anchorage and its staff his respectful friends; for they discovered, as had a few from his earlier existences, just how delightful and rich a personage was concealed within the retiring and self-deprecating exterior.
From first light Paddy would be at work sweeping the grounds. Later in the day staff cars would be washed and polished to a state of gleaming grandeur. The GAA changing rooms would be kept in order. Nothing of this was required of him. It was of the essence of his nature to work hard, to give pleasure to others, to create order, to celebrate friendship. His contributions to the welfare of the hospital caused him to be treated as an honorary member of staff.
It is time for an interpretation. In recent years, as the horrors of institutional life for children in Ireland began to be disclosed, Paddy took a few of his friends into his confidence. He had been physically abused in both Rathdrum and Artane, and sexually so in the latter. His experience on the farm at Ballinasloe was, to say the least, demeaning in the extreme. In spite of all the educators' efforts by way of physical punishment, he never learned to read or write other than his signature, yet he was a highly intelligent and wise man. These polarised contrasts were bottled up in one person for well-nigh 50 years. Little wonder the cold waters of the Liffey seemed on occasion to offer a decent oblivion.
Paddy Sweeney never hurt anyone. Contrary to the media-communicated model from the reports of court cases, the abused did not become the abuser in Paddy Sweeney. Except on a very rare occasion of outrageous injustice when his temper could momentarily flare, he was both a gentle and a noble man, sharing table fellowship with some of the best-born and best-bred in Ireland without embarrassment to them or him. Noble was a word used to describe him during the last weeks of his life when, in the compassionate care of St Francis Hospice, Raheny, he knew a continuous luxury of existence which in his previous experience had been seldom more than momentary. His senses of appreciation were excited. He commented on the elegance of the furniture design in the hospice. He approved of the quality of the soft furnishings - their matching and complementary colours. He enjoyed the sense of silence and serenity which the place evokes. He relished planning pilgrimage excursions in the days before his death. He revisited Rathdrum and Artane, St Brendan's, Gurteen and the sandy beaches on the way to Portmarnock and Malahide which recalled from his childhood memories brief moments of golden glory amid the overwhelming institutional drabness. And at the end, in true and faithful reconciliation, he came to be able to accept care and support from the hands of religious, his previous experience of whom in the days of his childhood and youth had been so distinctly otherwise, causing him on more than one occasion to dismiss the practice of religion as being "for the Indians". His was a spirit that sought out and eventually made some sense of human life and human suffering and we salute him. It was a very great privilege to share his friendship.
W.S.S.