Writes Leo McMahon
Last September, Carrigaline mourned the passing of Maurice Coveney, a man who willingly gave of his best to his local community and country, most notably as an employer, an international competitor and teacher of chess and through his service in the Air Corps and with the United Nations in The Congo.
Late last year, I spent a most enjoyable afternoon in his company. Sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to complete the interview for the The Carrigdhoun Supplement last summer because Maurice was indisposed, but I hope the following will suitably outline a most interesting and productive life of a man who deeply cherished his native Carrigaline.
‘On the day I was born, July 25th, 1939, the son of Bartholomew (Batt) Coveney from Ballea and Elizabeth (nee O’Connor), Leacht Cross, Carrigaline, running water had just arrived as a result of efforts involving James Cogan, my father and others. Up to then, one had to walk half a mile with a bucket to a well at the Rock’, said Maurice.
The Coveney’s, he went on, could be traced back around 1,000 years to when the Norman De Courceys, were the ruling family in the area.
‘A native of Killarney, my mother was fostered by the Russells in Ringaskiddy who had no children. Such a thing was quite normal at the time when most houses were small. She was one of five fostered girls in that household who were very well looked after and all did very well in later life.
‘My mother was the first female to work in Carrigaline Pottery established by Hodder Roberts and L T Keeling in 1928. In those times, a woman generally gave up paid employment on getting married and when this happened in the case of my mother, my father managed to get a job in the pottery and worked there for around 40 years’.
Maurice said he attended Carrigaline Boys’ National School across the road from the cricket field which is now the site of the Catholic church. Teachers included John Wren, Ms Murphy and Seamus Goggin. Classmates he recalled, included Eddie Cooney, Bernard O’Mahony, Peter Murphy, Noel Dwane, Donal Delanty, Paddy O’Mahony and Denis Lynch.
‘Growing up during ‘The Emergency’, I was very aware and interested in what was happening during World War 2 because my mother, who was a keen reader and historian, bought The Cork Examiner every day and would tell us what was happening. She had also lived through World War 1’. (The late Maurice’s siblings are Nora Cotter, Passage West; Margaret McMahon, Dublin and Catherine Mulcair, Carrigaline while an older brother Michael (Mikie) died in boyhood and is buried at Killingley, Ballygarvan).
‘We played in the cricket field (now the catholic church) mainly football and hurling. We were also very keen on athletics with Hilltown A.C., and one of our inspirations was cross country runner and Ireland’s Olympian marathon runner in the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland, Joe West from Carrigaline.
‘Aged around 13 or 14 in the early 1950’s, I attended Sharman Crawford School, known as ‘The Tech’ in Cork along with Eddie Cooney while another pal, Peter Murphy went to Cork College of Commerce, who had left Carrigaline Boys NS earlier than us, also went to ‘The Tech.’ I mainly studied mathematics, woodwork, electrical engineering and chemistry and recall that Mr Urrell was an excellent maths teacher.’
Maurice said he got a lot of small jobs in Cork, mainly in mechanical work and on completing his time at ‘The Tech’, applied to become a Garda but was millimetres too short in height to qualify.
In his teens, he played and enjoyed cycling as well as gaelic games with Carrigaline and won South East minor hurling and football medals in 1957. A serious leg injury in his 20s ended his GAA career.
Air Corps
‘In the mid 1950’s, I decided to join the Air Corps. It was very difficult to get in and around 1,000 applied but I managed to be one of the 30 accepted. I understand that Carrigaline Sergeant McCarville and my former teacher John Wren, a former Army man, wrote letters of recommendation.’.
There were three months of initial training at Baldonnel Aerodrome, Co Dublin and in the nearby Curragh, Co Kildare where new recruits learned a wide variety of skills, including how to swim. It was also where I first learned how to play chess.
‘I came first in the new recruits class of 30 after three months. Over the next two years, there were different modules mainly focused on engineering which I really enjoyed. I completed my qualifications and was assigned to duties as a ground staff airman.
The Congo
Just after that, the war in the Congo started and Ireland had sent out a force on behalf of the United Nations to the African state. Maurice recalled: ‘I was doing draughtsmanship and for the first time, it was decided to send out members of the Irish Air Corps in a pipe band. I had been taught how to play the pipes in Carrigaline Pipe Band by Willie Cogan and others. I wasn’t great at it but I went out in 1959 as a band member because several better than me had declined to go. My pay was £2.8shillings.’ He showed me a photograph of himself in the band which appeared in an article in Ireland’s Own and recalled that some had blank pipes because they couldn’t play!
‘I was in the 24th Battalion of the Air Corps and spent six months in The Congo during which the UN Irish suffered losses in the Katanga province of the former Belgian colony. It was very dangerous at the time and 26 Irish soldiers died. One of his Cork comrades was Jimmy Galway from Carr’s Hill, who was a fine hurling and hockey player.’ Maurice returned home from the Congo in 1961.
‘After five years and along with many others, I bought myself out of the Air Corps and worked in various jobs because there were then lots of options in civilian life for those who could work on aircrafts’, said Maurice.
To England
The Carrigaline man went to England in the mid 1965 and got a job at Feltham near London Heathrow Airport with Weltrade, established by an ex Air Corps man before his time, Sean Hurley from Ballydehob, who had various enterprises.
‘Ford Motor Company needed people to inspect its tractors manufactured in Basildon, Essex near Dagenham prior to export to various countries with different requirements and Sean got myself and others to do this. The pay at 11 shillings per hour was very good but you had to work long hours.
‘The next job I got through Sean was with the airline Lufthansa in Hamburg, Germany in 1967. Along with four ex Air Corps and some RAF men, we worked as engineers checking on the first Boeing 737 and 747 jets. The aeroplanes were massive with scaffolding all around and my main duty was working on pneumatics. Checks would take around three months for each aircraft. I also worked on one of the first vertical take-off jets in a different part of Germany.’
Maurice’s career then moved to Cambridge, England, working on crashed aircraft, again made possible through entrepreneur Sean Hurley who at one time employed 1,000 people.
In 1970, he got the opportunity to return to work in Ireland at Rostellan, East Cork in the manufacture of large hovercrafts. The man in charge of this business was a John P Goulandris, a multi-millionaire and philanthropist from a Greek shipping dynasty, whose sister Chryss was married to businessman and Irish rugby star Tony O’Reilly. He recalled how he and Crosshaven man Tom Truss would get a lift to and from work from Finbarr Cogan of the family pub in Carrigaline who had a job in Whitegate Oil Refinery.
‘I had four people working under me, mainly on the air inlets for hovercrafts. Problems arose within the staff and with nothing to do for about five weeks, I got fed up and decided to move to England again in 1973 and take up a position in Wimbledon, for Mr Goulandris making electric motors etc. He also owned the factory on the Greek island of Syros that manufactured the electric Enfield-Neorion car, known as the E8000). Although one of the first electric cars, the mileage from the batteries was very limited and only 120 were made but it was ahead of its time.
‘During my time there, a customer whose engine he worked on was Brazilian Formula 1 and Indianapolis racing driver champion Emerson Fittipaldi, whom I got to know well from calls to the factory.
Maurice recalled other highlights of a fascinating career in engineering. He travelled to work on a project for an American company installing valves at Asyut on the Nile Valley in Egypt and was part of a team transporting a special tank from Abu Dhabi to Verolme Dockyard, Rushbrooke which was subsequently transported to Bantry Bay.
Got Married
Maurice Coveney returned to Carrigaline and married Rose Cogan from Carrigaline in Church of Our Lady and St John on October 12th, 1968. The married couple lived for a while with eight others, including the athlete Mary Jeffords from Carrigaline, when Maurice was working in Wimbledon. Other Corkonians who joined them when living at Clapham, he recalled, were Nancy Teehan, Aidan and Sheila Tarrant.
Her parents were John and Mary Ann Cogan who had the Mill at Cork Road. Maurice and Rose built a pre-fab bungalow next to the old family home at Carrigaline East, close to Leacht Cross which is called ‘Laskerville’.
The couple had two daughters, Deirdre and Patricia (Trish) and two sons John and Maurice. Deirdre (Sheehan) has a daughter Aoife and son Noah and Trish and husband Mike Furlong in Killarney have a son Oliver and daughter Grace.
On his return to Ireland in 1976, Maurice worked as an engineer at the Chemi Biotic Plant, (later Schering Plough, Brinny, near Innishannon for four or five years and now MSD Brinny). The company was owned by Bruno Falzani, ‘a colourful character’ who also had factories in Milan and Madrid.
In 1981, Maurice and Wietze Buwalda from Crosshaven as directors, along with accountant Maurice Kennefick, whom he both greatly admired, established Crosshaven Engineering Services initially at Crosshaven.
A site for a new factory was subsequently purchased not far from Leacht Cross, Carrigaline from Jim O’Farrell on what is today Keohane’s Motor Parts.
After he sold Chemic Biotic, Bruno Falzani asked the Co Cork business to ship tanks and other equipment to Argentina, a huge undertaking which they did successfully.
At its peak he said, Crosshaven Engineering employed 120 people. It was mainly engaged in construction and engineering work. It became Carrig Engineer Services in 1996 and traded for 23 years. There was also a sister company for a while, IMC, in the same location not far from Maurice’s home. Wietse incidentally, went on to set up his own very successful boatyard business in Crosshaven.
Maurice eventually took over the entire running of the company. A major project was constructing the first jetty at the new port of Ringaskiddy for £1 million which was used by ferry ships. There were several other projects over the years.
The company built another jetty in Anglesey, Wales but what finished it off, he contended, was the impact of the collapse of a jetty in Ramsgate, Kent (nothing to do with the Co Cork based company) which significantly raised the cost of the project.
Carrig Engineering (which at some stage also traded as Carrigaline Engineering) eventually went into receivership in 2001. Maurice, suffered ill health, including a heart attack and temporary loss of speech and retired.
In the long list of condolences on RIP.ie following his death, there were numerous tributes from former workers.
Maurice served for many years on Carrigaline Community Association, along with his old friend Barry Cogan and others.
In his retirement, Maurice liked nothing better than to play chess and watch grandmasters online at Carrigaline Library and paid tribute to the staff there. He would also regularly attend meetings of the local community association and argued strongly for Carrigaline and immediate hinterland to have its own town council. He served on the County Development Board and on the pilot project team that successfully achieved a new library for the town in 2009. Maurice was for many years a member of Fianna Fail and during the mid ‘eighties joined the Progressive Democrats. He stood as an Independent candidate in the 2009 county council elections.
In a tribute, Barry Cogan said he and his late brother Liam were friends of Maurice since childhood ‘He was our nearest neighbour and we spent many a day playing games, hunting and cycling to matches and dances. He was a very genuine and bright man with a great sense of humour. His father Batt was also a great friend of our family and almost like a father to us because my father Edmond died when I was 12 years of age’.
· Unfortunately, due to Maurice’s failing health and not having all information to hand, it was not possible to verify everything that he related to me and hence there may be some errors, but I am grateful to his family and Barry Cogan for assisting in this deserved tribute article to a man who never sought the limelight but contributed significantly to his beloved Carrigaline and beyond.
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