Fergus Finlay: Sr Stan never settled in her advocacy for people on the margins of Irish life

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy never met a barrier (and that could include Government ministers!) she didn’t want to tear down. File photo: Fran Veale

I knew Sister Stan when I was much younger. I admired her and respected her enormously. I was always a bit afraid of her. I think I may have had that in common with everyone who worked with her.

Not that she was unpleasant or bullying or anything like that. She just didn’t believe in settling. She was an advocate for people who lived on the margins of Irish life. In fact she found it hard to accept why people were pushed out beyond barriers.

She never met a barrier (and that could include Government ministers!) she didn’t want to tear down.

When you work in the community and voluntary sector in Ireland, you sometimes feel you have to walk a fine line. Your work is to some degree funded by the State, and it is often the State that fails. 

Sr Stan helped to found Kilkenny Social Services, which became a model for dozens of similar interventions around the country.

That puts you in the position of criticising the entity that funds the salaries and operations of your organisation. So you can find yourself lying awake at night wondering whether something you’ve said or written — entirely truthful and entirely necessary — had gone over the top and jeopardised a necessary funding relationship.

I once told Sister Stan that I had developed a sort of philosophy of advocacy to try to get that balance right. I praised what I could, I said, and I criticised what I had to. She wasn’t dismissive or scornful — too polite for that that — but she wondered how many nights I’d have to stay awake to find anything to praise in Ireland’s approach to social policy.

I guess the facts of Sister Stan’s life are reasonably well-known. She entered religious life, becoming a nun, in 1958. Under the influence of Bishop Peter Birch, perhaps the most progressive Irish religious leader in the last 100 years, she helped to found Kilkenny Social Services, which became a model for dozens of similar interventions around the country.

She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t perfect. I suspect she regretted, for instance, not being sufficiently honest and open about the extent of the abuse of children that happened in St Joseph’s Home in Kilkenny in the 1970s.

Combat Poverty

But as she grew she became more and more determined to make a difference in the world around her. Senior people in the Labour Party (I’m proud to say) like Brendan Corish and Frank Cluskey persuaded her to become the first chair of what was to become Combat Poverty. 

Started as a set of pilot schemes it became an indispensable source of research, advocacy and action about the entire issue of poverty. Under Sister Stan’s guidance it was never “behind the door” in addressing the inequalities and injustices behind a lot of the grinding poverty then prevalent in urban and rural Ireland.

In the Celtic tiger era, when Ireland was getting “boomier and boomier” as its then government leader described it, Combat Poverty annoyed them. The very idea of an independent agency with poverty in its name, at a time when government was hell-bent on turning everything into a commodity — was an affront. 

They succeeded in branding it as just another quango and eventually got rid of it. Of course, they never admitted they were abolishing it, just “integrating it” into a new and much more powerful social cohesion unit in a government department. You’ve heard a lot about that powerful and independent social cohesion unit in the years since, haven’t you?

Homelessness

By then Sister Stan had moved into what became the defining mission of her life — securing homes for people who needed them. On the cover of Focus Ireland’s most recent annual report Sister Stan is quoted saying: “Homelessness is not only a housing issue; it is a social justice issue, a child welfare issue and an educational crisis all at once.” 

It’s why Focus Ireland (or Focus Point as it was originally) was not founded to run soup kitchens or to provide temporary shelter (though they’re both essential at times). From the beginning Focus’s mission was to advocate for homes, to secure homes, and to provide homes. It was always about the right to a decent home, first and foremost.

It was tiny then. Now, it is the largest agency helping people to move out of homelessness in the community and voluntary sector. An idea that grew out of a religious sister’s passion and commitment now has hundreds of millions of euro in housing assets. It spends tens of millions a year in helping people out of homelessness.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy was a leader.

In the most recent year it published a full report, more than 1,500 families and over 4,000 children were enabled to find homes, in many cases after too long a search. Children are better protected at home, more likely to thrive in education, finally closing a social injustice gap. Just like she said.

And here’s another thing you need to know. Everyone who has worked around the charity sector knows that problems can occur and develop, sometimes to a point where enormous damage is done to reputation and sometimes even to the sustainability of the charity’s mission. 

Sr Stan's leadership

There’s a phrase we use sometimes — founder syndrome. It happens when the person who starts the organisation or leads it for a long time comes to believe that the rules don’t apply to them. They can hire who they like, lend to who they like, put only their pals on the board. 

It’s immensely dangerous, even when the founders are as well-meaning as possible.

But Focus Ireland is a model of good governance. That couldn’t have happened without the full support of Sister Stan, who knew when it was time to separate herself from the day-to-day executive functioning of the organisation she founded, and enable really good structures of management and accountability to be put in place.

It may seem a bit boring, all that stuff, not quite the stuff of a movie. It maybe doesn’t quite fit in with the image of the feisty nun determined to build houses and buck the system, infuriating the politicians because she won’t take no for an answer and achieves more in her own way than the system, hidebound by bureaucracy, can ever achieve.

But building an organisation like Focus and then handing it over to ensure its standards and reputation were protected into the future — that all took leadership. And above all, Sister Stan was a leader. She had the capacity to translate vision into action, to bring people with her, and to defy the odds.

Sr Stanislaus Kennedy was the first chair of what was to become Combat Poverty.  File photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

There’ll be all sorts of tributes paid to Sister Stan in the coming days, every one thoroughly well-deserved. But when I was reading Focus’s most recent annual report, I came across this story, about Gemma, a mum the organisation worked with. 

In 2024, Gemma and her daughters were finally housed in their ‘forever home’.

"Every tear and every fight was worth it," she says now. One of the happiest moments came when she surprised her daughters with the dog they longed for, something they had always had before their experience of homelessness. 

Focus did that. Sister Stan did that. A thousand times over.