Clodagh Finn: A street in dire need of women

And David McRedmond, CEO of An Post and independent chair of the taskforce, was the first to say that the all-male panel was really unfortunate, but it should not detract from the report itself. As the head of a company that has all but eliminated the gender pay gap, he has shown that An Post walks the talk.

He is also right to suggest that we should focus on the contents of the report, with its ambitions to increase residential space, boost garda numbers and revitalise the O’Connell Street area.

For now, let’s concentrate on the latter. The lack of visibility of women on the taskforce’s panel might have been a silly one-off oversight, but it’s systematic of a much deeper issue. Just look down O’Connell Street itself and you’ll be greeted by a procession of male statues that starts with the behemoth of Daniel O’Connell at one end of the street and nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell at the other.

Along the way, you’ll pass sculptures of rebellion leader William Smith O’Brien, Freeman’s Journal editor Sir John Grey, temperance leader Fr Theobald Mathew and union leader James (Jim) Larkin, not to mention the gleaming phallus of the Spire.

It’s worth noting here that Tipperary woman Mary Redmond, one of the few female sculptors of her time, was the artist behind the Fr Mathew statue which was unveiled in 1893. Even a plaque noting that fact would be a good start.

Happily, there is a plaque at the former offices of the Ladies’ Land League at 37/38 O’Connell Street Upper. It commemorates the league’s co-founder Anna Parnell, the artist and writer whose contribution to the Irish Land War of the late 19th century was at least as significant as that of her brother Charles Stewart Parnell.

Yet, he stands tall atop a dizzying plinth not too far away while she is remembered in a small wall notice. It is, nonetheless, a very welcome addition.

There’s another Parnell-related story that richly deserves to be inscribed on the capital city’s meridian line of remembrance. At its centre is Agnes A V Ryan (1890-1971) from Tipperary, an extraordinary woman who built a thriving business when she was widowed at the age of 43 with eight young children to raise.

The story — and the business — began very near the Parnell statue when Agnes and her fiancé, Seamus Ryan, a former creamery manager, leased a premises on Parnell Street in Dublin in 1918. According to family lore, when Agnes looked out the window and saw the monument to her hero Charles Stewart Parnell, she considered it a good omen.

She named the couple’s new venture Monument Creamery, the first word a nod to Parnell, the second, recognition of her husband’s creamery background. Before long, business was booming with city customers queueing for the shop’s fresh farm produce — butter, cheese, bacon and milk — which came by train from farms in Tipperary.

Business was so brisk and the couple so committed that they went straight back to work after marrying the following year, in 1919, at the nearby Pro-Cathedral.

Agnes and Seamus Ryan were ardent nationalists and, when a second shop opened in Camden Street in 1920, both premises were used as safe houses for the IRA. Ammunition was hidden in the bottom of butter boxes and transported around the city.

Agnes, however, was deeply disillusioned by the bitterness of the Civil War in 1922 and lost all interest in politics. Her husband, by contrast, became ever more involved in the fledging Fianna Fáil party and went on to become a senator.

Meantime, their business went from strength to strength and by 1933, some 18 Monument Creamery grocers were operating in the city and suburbs. A new Monument bakery also opened on O’Connell Street, using only Irish eggs and butter.

Then, just as the couple was considering further expansion, Agnes’s husband died suddenly at the age of 40 in 1933. It was a devastating blow. Agnes A V Ryan was left to run a business, raise her eight children — and face rumours of bankruptcy, as her daughter Íde M Ní Riain recounts in The Life and Times of Mrs A V Ryan (née Agnes Harding) of the Monument Creameries:

“Only a fortnight after the Senator’s death and impressive [State] funeral a rumour rose, as if from nowhere, saying that he had died bankrupt. People who had lately courted her, and flattered her, now looked the other way when they met her in the street. Agnes replied by buying a new car, one of the first Daimlers to be seen in Dublin.”

She went on to buy the 30-roomed Burton Hall in Sandyford in 1938 and oversaw a very successful business which, at its peak, employed 500 people in 26 shops, a pub, two bakeries and two tearooms.

Her granddaughter Barbara Fitzgibbon, who lived at Burton Hall as a child in the early 1950s, recalls her grandmother, or ‘the A V’ as she was known, as a woman of amazing resilience.

“Memories of my grandmother were of a very busy lady, whose chauffeur we suspected was also her bodyguard. She was extremely good to all her household staff, and thoughtful of their needs. She maintained a magnificent home and wonderful kitchen garden, and I will never forget the smell of ripe peaches within one of the large glasshouses. She had a prizewinning herd of dairy cows, and essential bull, and was certainly way ahead of her time.”

She was also a very well-known figure around the city as this wonderful anecdote from her daughter Íde illustrates:

“Name and address, playze,” a large garda said to the driver of a car parked where it had no right. “Úna Bean Uí Riain,” replied Eddie Keogh, pompously. Úna Bean Uí Riain, repeated the garda, and wrote it laboriously, getting no help at all with the spelling from the stern featured chauffeur, or for that matter from Úna Bean herself who leant back watching the scene with some amusement.

“Address, playze.” Here Eddie’s Irish failed him, and lapsing into béarla, he said, “Monument Creameries”.

“Ah, is it Mrs Ryan of the Monument?” asked the guard, looking in genially at the lady, “sure why didn’t ye tell me that in the first place? Drive on and God bless ye.”

Yet, if you walked down O’Connell Street today, I wonder how many people would remember this formidable woman who was also a committed patron of the Arts?

The Dublin City Taskforce report includes plans to redevelop the GPO as a major public building with a new museum. If it goes ahead, it should include her story and those of all the other forgotten women of O’Connell Street and environs.

In the meantime, we might think about putting up some kind of monument to recall Mrs Ryan of the Monument?