HUGE CROWDS turned out last night to pay their respects to the late Maurice Neligan, as his remains were taken to the same church in Booterstown, Dublin, where he was baptised in 1937.
Msgr Séamus Conway, parish priest at the Church of the Assumption, said his family, friends and colleagues were deeply shocked by the sudden and unexpected death of the pioneering heart surgeon and Irish Timescolumnist last Friday.
Mr Neligan died suddenly but peacefully at his home in Dublin, aged 73 years.
“We gather with you this evening in huge numbers as a tribute to Maurice and as an expression of our sympathy and support,” he told mourners led by Mr Neligan’s wife Pat, their children Maurice, John, David, Kate, Lisa and Lucy, his sister Margot and six grandchildren. His daughter Sara died in 2007.
“We pray to and thank God for his wonderful life of healing service as a doctor and as a surgeon, and with Christian faith and hope we pray for him, asking God to grant him new and unending life, the life of heaven.”
People from the worlds of entertainment, sport, medicine, politics and the arts turned out in their hundreds to express support and sympathy to the family.
Among them were Ministers Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews; Fine Gael’s deputy leader and health spokesman Dr James Reilly; former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes; and UCD adjunct professor of politics Maurice Manning.
Also there were broadcasters Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Jimmy Magee, actor Frank Kelly, poet Brendan Kennelly and singer Andrea Corr.
Old colleagues from Dublin’s Mater hospital, where Mr Neligan performed Ireland’s first coronary artery bypass graft in 1975 and the first heart transplant in 1985, were also there in force, including Prof Eoin O’Malley, who was a founder of the Mater’s cardiac unit; cardiothoracic surgeon Freddie Wood; ophthalmic surgeon Prof Michael O’Keeffe; consultant neurologist Tim Lynch; surgeon Gerry McEntee; gastroenterologists John Crowe and John Lennon; respiratory physician Brendan Keogh; surgeon Martin Walsh; and former head of nursing Anne Carrigy, now head of the HSE’s serious incident management team. Dr Seán Tierney, president of the Irish Medical Organisation, was also present as was former president Dr Christine O’Malley.
Also present was Frank Feely, former Dublin city manager and deputy board chairman of Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, where Mr Neligan performed heart surgery.
A large contingent from Dooks Golf Club in Kerry, where Mr Neligan had a holiday home and where he regularly played golf, formed a guard of honour.
Among the grateful patients present was Liam Moloney from Loughrea, Co Galway, who was operated on by Mr Neligan in Crumlin as an eight-year-old and again in the Mater as a 27-year-old. “I wouldn’t be around today only for him,” he said.
Mr Neligan’s funeral Mass takes place today at noon, after which his remains will be taken to Mount Jerome Crematorium.