Irish Examiner view: Organ donors change lives

Remember others’ great needs

Siobhan Brosnan: it is almost criminal not to follow Ms Brosnan’s and her family’s wonderful example.

We all, or at least the luckier ones among us, know someone who lives in inspiring ways. Most of us know people who give their values real meaning by remembering, even at defining moments, to make decisions based on values shaped by experience and a recognition of others’ needs.

The pandemic has brought out the very best in many people, especially health and care home staff. Some have shown an unimagined capacity for selflessness. However, long before Covid-19 changed our world, organ donors recognised how very transformative such a gesture, such a simple remembering of others’ great needs, might be. Siobhan Brosnan, an organ-donation manager for UL Hospitals, died on Sunday after a Good Friday crash. Mary Barry, from Tralee, was killed immediately in that two-car Adare crash.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner just weeks ago, Ms Brosnan said she is “continuously amazed by the selflessness of families at the most difficult of times”. 

Her family has made her admiration more than a warm sentiment, by agreeing that her organs be donated to recipients in desperate need. There are between 550 and 600 people in that very difficult situation in Ireland today.

Each of us, by carrying a card or telling relatives of our wish to be a donor, can shorten that list. That process is so simple, but so enriching, that it is almost criminal not to follow Ms Brosnan’s and her family’s wonderful example.