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LIMERICK WOMAN ÁINE O’Reilly was a “brilliant” nurse who spent her life putting others before herself, mourners have heard.
She was described as a “warm”, “independent” woman who loved comedy, current affairs and animals by her brother.
A huge crowd gathered for Ms O’Reilly’s funeral mass at St John the Baptist Church in Nicker this morning, including some of her nursing colleagues who had travelled from London to attend.
A guard of honour of people in high-vis vests from ShannonDoc, Ms O’Reilly’s employer, was formed outside.
Ms O’Reilly, 33, died in a collision on Friday night that left another driver injured, while a third fled the scene.
The nurse was on her way to work when the incident took place on the N24 near Grange West, Boher.
Parish priest Fr Tomas O’Connell said Ms O’Reilly’s death had dealt her family an “unbelievable blow”, and said she was taken “in such a heartbreaking way”.
In the eulogy, her brother Eoin described Ms O’Reilly as a “warm” woman who loved to laugh, who loved music and current affairs, cooking and travel, and who carried herself with “elegance and poise”.
“Beneath all that, there was a strength and a resilience which I could never truly understand,” he said.
He said she had an “incredible caring nature” and was “a brilliant nurse” who also “adored” animals.
“Generations of family pets in our house will never know how good they had it,” he said.
He thanked people who had reached out to their family, prayed for them or expressed their condolences in recent days – and said his “little sister” would always be with them.
He added: “One crumb of comfort I have is that in her last moments with us on this earth, before the lights went out, she was in her car, listening to her music – singing along, of course – going to a job she was (meant to do), looking forward to the next new exciting chapter. Independent, free and happy.
“A nation mourns the loss of the beautiful young woman you turned into.
“Sleep well, little sister.”
He thanked the emergency services, Fr O’Connell and those who had provided food to the family in recent days.
“We gather as a community in prayer and in grief and, of course, in shock today to pray with and to be with Áine’s family,” Fr O’Connell said.
“Áine, indeed, was a person who gave. She gave to her family, gave to her community, and her work colleagues.
“Her life was one of putting herself (after) others, and it is so tragic that in the twinkling of an eye, that life of giving was taken from her so tragically last Friday.”
He said the life of Ms O’Reilly’s family came to “a shuddering halt”, and as the community heard the news, “nothing else was spoken about in the whole place”.
He added: “There was a palpable silence here, as the huge cloud of gloom – is all I would call it – had well and truly settled over this area, if not indeed the entire country.”
He said the people that care about the O’Reilly family could be “an unction for them in their time of grief”, and that Ms O’Reilly had left many memories of her caring and kind nature.
He called for prayers for a man aged in his 40s who was injured in the crash, and other victims of road traffic accidents.
Ms O’Reilly’s parents, Ann and Eugene, lit a candle at the start of the mass – and her brothers James and Conor read the first and second readings.
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