“Thomas Conroy, from County Laois, myself and Patrick Dorney, both from Cloneen, County Tipperary. We worked together
in Terenure College when it was a boarding school, serving in the kitchen and waiting on tables. I was only fifteen years old and
it was my first time in Dublin. I didn’t go to secondary school and I felt the people in the boarding school were privileged. They’d have tennis racquets for the court while we’d be using our hands in the handball alley. When the kids went home for summer, we’d clean up the locker room and find discarded tennis rackets, Playboy magazines, fancy jackets and other items of clothing. We’d be delighted. It was an education in itself; it taught me about money, as we’d have to manage our own wages. I got into the CIÉ dining cars on the back of having done that job.”

(1963)

Submitted by John Roche