Born November 11th, 1961
Died June 23rd, 2025
When Jacqueline (Jacqui) Browne, a thalidomide survivor, leading advocate for the disabled, intrepid sailor, ace wit and great baker, died aged 63 she was surrounded by her family and beloved pets at her home in Fenit overlooking Tralee Bay, Co Kerry.
Despite being born with impaired hands and forearms, speech and hearing impediments, as well as lifelong issues with her hips, in many ways her skills as a sailor underpinned her tenacity and bravery.
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Browne participated in the Clipper Round-the-World Yacht Race 2009-2010 aboard the Irish entry, Cork, which won the leg from Rio de Janeiro to Capetown. However, after the craft went aground and sank on an uncharted rock in the South China Sea, leaving the crew scrambling on to a lifeboat, she insisted on joining another yacht to finish the race.
Her seafaring adventures encapsulate her undaunted spirit in the face of adversity. Browne underwent more than 40 significant surgeries during her life while living with chronic pain. She was one of 40 thalidomide survivors in Ireland.
The drug was invented in Switzerland as a tranquilliser, but later developed during the 1950s by German pharmaceutical company Grünenthal to treat morning sickness in the first three months of pregnancy.
Its connection to severe birth defects – particularly limb deformities and miscarriages – caused a big global health crisis, with thousands of victims and survivors in 46 countries across the globe.
Browne was born the same month that the controversial drug was withdrawn from the global market in 1961. Yet there is evidence that it was still available in Ireland up to 1964.
[ Delay in thalidomide recall could be responsible for up to 50% of injuries hereOpens in new window ]
Browne was just five years old when she had the first of many surgeries on her hands. The same year her parents sent her to board in St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls in Cabra, where she received specialised speech therapy and language training. As the fourth of five children, Browne said she felt isolated and missed “the rough and tumble” of a very happy family life.
Back then it was at least a six-hour drive to Dublin from her home in Basin View, for her busy parents. Her father, Donal E Brown was state solicitor for Kerry and her mother, Jean, a registered nurse, was busy rearing four other children.
When Browne returned home, after a year boarding, to mainstream school in Presentation Primary School, she was also faced with the emotional challenges of being treated “very differently”.
Her secondary school education, also at the Presentation Convent and as a boarder in Drishane in north Cork, was also regularly interrupted by the need for medical procedures and operations.
Indeed, it was only when she reached adolescence that the damage the thalidomide drug had done to her hips was fully recognised. In 1975, aged 13, she endured a whole summer lying in traction on the flat of her back, weights on her legs, in Croom Orthopaedic Hospital in Co Limerick.
A keen hockey and basketball player up until then, she was forced to spend most of her teenage years on two crutches.
This latest challenge didn’t deter her. Although she could no longer play her beloved sports, and walk or cycle to school, she persuaded her parents to buy her a Honda 50 to which she strapped her two crutches and, characteristically, ensured her own unique independence.
Indeed, spending that summer of 1975 in hospital was only the beginning of three major hip operations she underwent during her teens. Since she was too young for a hip replacement, it was decided to fuse her hip in a fixed position until she had stopped growing.
This meant another long stay, at Cappagh orthopaedic hospital, Dublin, when she had to wear a plaster body cast, from her chest to her knees, to immobilise her hip.
Despite missing many school days during these years, Browne was excellent with numbers, and her father encouraged her to take a job in a bank after leaving school.
Thus in the early 1980s she worked for a time at the AIB branch in Limerick before moving to its branch on College Green, Dublin. Due to the gaps in her education, she felt university was not an option but after her brother Donal J wrote to the president of UCD outlining her situation, she enrolled as a night student in 1983, completing a degree in economics and politics and later a master’s in education at Trinity College Dublin.
During this time she became immersed in disability advocacy and gradually became known as an authoritative voice on local, national and international forums.
Among her multitude of roles was as a member of the disability advisory committee of the Irish Human Rights Equality Commission, on the board of the International Foundation for Integrated Care and the board of the Independent Living Movement of Ireland.
Moreover, she was nominated by the government to attend the Fourth UN world conference on women’s rights in Beijing in 1995.
As a leading voice with the Irish Thalidomide Association and the Disabled Persons Organisations (DPO) Network she played a pivotal role in contributing to policy papers. This role includes her contributions to the forthcoming national disability strategy.
In 1982, when Jacqui was 21, her father gave her a large folder of meticulously kept files of all the correspondence, medical records and notes he and her mother had compiled from their two-decade battle for justice for their daughter.
That folder would grow exponentially over the following four decades.
Whilst Ireland’s thalidomide survivors - and the small number of their parents still living - await proper redress from the State to this day, the light shone on Browne’s visceral positivity and stubborn good humour has injected a renewed vibrancy in the ongoing campaign by her many friends and colleagues with disabilities.
In the early 2000s Browne broke her hip once again while sailing her Topper dinghy in the waters near her home in Tralee Bay.
During his eulogy at her funeral Mass at St John’s Church in Tralee, Donal J recalled how she came ashore on that occasion trying to lift her boat up the steep slipway, crossing the dinghy park with her mast over her shoulder to put it in the boat shed.
Afterwards, her doctor told her that she would “undoubtedly end up in a wheelchair if she sailed again.”
“Undaunted, after a short period of recovery and rehabilitation, Jacqui decided to sail across the Atlantic on the tall ship Tenacious, built to facilitate both disabled and abled crew. She climbed 70ft over the deck to go up the yards and she was instructing wheelchair users during the journey,” her brother said.
Jacqui Browne is survived by her sisters Michélè and Sharon, brothers Donal J and Kevin, extended family, her many friends and colleagues, and her much-loved dog, Sandy, and cat, Lorenzo.
