Dr Tim O’Connor has had a great career as a Diplomat and Public Servant at national and international level and has also made a great contribution to his native Limerick.

Tim is a native of Killeedy in West Limerick, where he played football and hurling with the local GAA club as a juvenile. Having completed his secondary education at St Munchin’s College, he left Limerick in 1969 to take up further education studies at Maynooth College. He worked briefly as a teacher before joining the Civil Service in Dublin in 1974, moving to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in 1979. Most of his DFA career was spent working on the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

Tim was part of the Irish Government Negotiating Team for the Good Friday Agreement, was involved in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the new North/South structures arising from the Agreement and spent almost six years in Armagh (from 1999 to 2005) as the inaugural Joint Secretary of the North/South Ministerial Council. He has also served terms as Director of the Africa Unit and of the Human Rights Unit in the DFA. His foreign postings included the Embassies of Ireland in Bonn and Washington DC and from 2005-2007 he served as the Consul General of Ireland in New York, USA.

He served as Secretary General to President Mary McAleese at Aras an Uachtarain from 2007 to 2010. Tim has been awarded honorary doctorates from NUl Maynooth (2005), Quinnipiac University (Connecticut, USA) (2007) and the University of Ulster (2009), in recognition of his great contribution to public life.

Since retiring from the Civil Service in 2010, Tim has served as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Government’s very successful Gathering Ireland initiative in 2013. He was also Chairman of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at UCD from 2010-2015.

Over the past three years or so, Tim has also served in many leadership roles for his native Limerick. He was Vice-Chairman of Limerick National City of Culture 2014, and is currently Vice-Chair- man of Global Limerick, an innovative initiative of Limerick Local Authority, through which Limerick is reaching out to its 3 million diaspora around the world. A member of the Limerick Economic Forum, Tim has served as Chairman of the Limerick Marketing Company and is also Chairman of the Shannon Consortium ( a collaboration between UL, LIT and Mary Immaculate College).

Congratulations Tim, a very worth recipient of the 2016 Club Limerick (Dublin) Limerick Person of the Year Award.

This award is presented each year to a Limerick person in Dublin who has made a major contribution as an ambassador for Limerick – whether in sporting, business, public service, community or other areas.

Extract from the Club Limerick (Dublin) programme 2016