Brendan Mimnagh (1948-1924)
Brendan Mimnagh (1948 - 2024), was the youngest of five children and grew up on a farm in Killoe, Co. Longford. After secondary school, he spent a year in Ballyhaise Agricultural College in Cavan before entering UCD’s Veterinary College. He used to recount that the highlight of his graduation in 1973 was a lunch in Dublin’s premier hotel, The Shelbourne, with his father and two sisters.
After graduation he headed to Anglesey in Wales where he worked for nearly a year before the sudden death of a vet in his hometown of Longford led to an opportunity to run his own practice.
This was a huge challenge for a newly-graduated vet with barely a year’s experience under his belt but Brendan rose to the challenge with the help of Kathleen, his future wife.
They had met in Dublin through mutual acquaintances while Brendan was in college and Kathleen was working with Julian Vard furrier’s business in Harcourt St. Together, they ran the practice from a garage attached to their home in Longford, getting married in January 1976 and going on to raise three children, Mark, Martina and Paul.
Large animal practice in rural Ireland in the 70s and 80s was a gruelling lifestyle due to the physical nature of the job and the almost non-existent time off. The concept of work-life balance was light years away!
With few farmers having access to phones and the practice being based at home it was a regular occurrence for farmers to turn up in the middle of the night and throw pebbles at the bedroom window to wake Brendan for a call.
The practice eventually moved to a premises in Church St. in Longford and Gerry Mulvihill joined Brendan as a partner. The challenges of running a business in Ireland in the 1980s are illustrated by the fact that it took Brendan six months to get the practice phone number moved from his house to the new practice premises!
After twenty years in practice Brendan decided he needed a new challenge and he joined the Department of Agriculture as a Veterinary Inspector. His first posting was to the District Veterinary Office (DVO) in Ballybay, Co. Monaghan before he returned a few years later to the DVO in Longford.
The highlight of this stage of his career was his involvement in the control of the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in the Cooley peninsula in Co. Louth in 2001 following on from the UK outbreak.
Brendan was a pivotal figure in the temporary headquarters set up by the Department of Agriculture in the Ballymascanlon Hotel in Louth which oversaw the recruitment and deployment of large numbers of vets for surveillance of herds of cattle and sheep in the peninsula and the successful elimination of the infection in the area.
Having grown up on a small, mixed farm in Co. Longford in the 1960s, Brendan Mimnagh was well-placed to appreciate the contribution that livestock farming made to rural economies and the foundation of Bóthar, the Irish livestock development agency, in 1991 grabbed his imagination with Brendan accompanying many of their initial livestock shipments to Africa and eastern Europe.
His experiences there led him to found Volunteers in Irish Veterinary Assistance (VIVA) in 1999 to harness the solidarity of the Irish veterinary sector for development projects overseas.
The aftermath of the war in Kosovo in the Balkans was the setting for VIVA’s first major initiative. An acute shortage of winter fodder faced Kosovar farmers on their return to their farms and VIVA was approached for assistance. An appeal by Brendan on morning radio attracted a huge response with over €20,000 being donated by the public and farming organisations.
Concentrate feed was purchased in Italy and imported into Kosovo by VIVA’s partner there, Heifer Kosovo. Over the next 25 years over one million Euro was raised to fund projects in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.
Brendan was ideally suited to this work in that he loved to travel and was forever curious about new places and cultures. Most of all, he was a great people person treating everyone he met from the poorest farmer to the highest-ranking government official the same.
VIVA was a completely voluntary effort and Brendan never sought any accolades for his work, doing it for the satisfaction and joy it gave him.
In his retirement, Brendan loved having the time to enjoy the simple things in life. His haven was his glasshouse in the garden where he had a chair installed and where he would spend hours relaxing, reading a newspaper or listening to country music on the radio.
A week after his death, Storm Éowyn airlifted his glasshouse into the next world almost as if Brendan had summoned it so he could continue to enjoy its comforts!
Retirement also allowed Brendan and Kathleen to travel and do all the other things his busy career had prevented. His other great joy in his retirement were his three grandchildren, Nathan, Cara and Lauren. Unfortunately, Brendan was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2024 and underwent a challenging treatment regime before eventually succumbing to the effects of the condition in January 2025.
I last met Brendan in December and despite being in a lot of discomfort, he told me that he was hoping to get into good shape by Christmas so that he could enjoy some time with his grandchildren who were flying in from the US.
Brendan is survived by his wife Kathleen, his children Mark, Martina and Paul, Mark’s wife Pauline, his grandchildren, his sister Carmel and last but not least, his many friends at home and abroad.
After graduation he headed to Anglesey in Wales where he worked for nearly a year before the sudden death of a vet in his hometown of Longford led to an opportunity to run his own practice.
This was a huge challenge for a newly-graduated vet with barely a year’s experience under his belt but Brendan rose to the challenge with the help of Kathleen, his future wife.
They had met in Dublin through mutual acquaintances while Brendan was in college and Kathleen was working with Julian Vard furrier’s business in Harcourt St. Together, they ran the practice from a garage attached to their home in Longford, getting married in January 1976 and going on to raise three children, Mark, Martina and Paul.
Large animal practice in rural Ireland in the 70s and 80s was a gruelling lifestyle due to the physical nature of the job and the almost non-existent time off. The concept of work-life balance was light years away!
With few farmers having access to phones and the practice being based at home it was a regular occurrence for farmers to turn up in the middle of the night and throw pebbles at the bedroom window to wake Brendan for a call.
The practice eventually moved to a premises in Church St. in Longford and Gerry Mulvihill joined Brendan as a partner. The challenges of running a business in Ireland in the 1980s are illustrated by the fact that it took Brendan six months to get the practice phone number moved from his house to the new practice premises!
After twenty years in practice Brendan decided he needed a new challenge and he joined the Department of Agriculture as a Veterinary Inspector. His first posting was to the District Veterinary Office (DVO) in Ballybay, Co. Monaghan before he returned a few years later to the DVO in Longford.
The highlight of this stage of his career was his involvement in the control of the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in the Cooley peninsula in Co. Louth in 2001 following on from the UK outbreak.
Brendan was a pivotal figure in the temporary headquarters set up by the Department of Agriculture in the Ballymascanlon Hotel in Louth which oversaw the recruitment and deployment of large numbers of vets for surveillance of herds of cattle and sheep in the peninsula and the successful elimination of the infection in the area.
Having grown up on a small, mixed farm in Co. Longford in the 1960s, Brendan Mimnagh was well-placed to appreciate the contribution that livestock farming made to rural economies and the foundation of Bóthar, the Irish livestock development agency, in 1991 grabbed his imagination with Brendan accompanying many of their initial livestock shipments to Africa and eastern Europe.
His experiences there led him to found Volunteers in Irish Veterinary Assistance (VIVA) in 1999 to harness the solidarity of the Irish veterinary sector for development projects overseas.
The aftermath of the war in Kosovo in the Balkans was the setting for VIVA’s first major initiative. An acute shortage of winter fodder faced Kosovar farmers on their return to their farms and VIVA was approached for assistance. An appeal by Brendan on morning radio attracted a huge response with over €20,000 being donated by the public and farming organisations.
Concentrate feed was purchased in Italy and imported into Kosovo by VIVA’s partner there, Heifer Kosovo. Over the next 25 years over one million Euro was raised to fund projects in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.
Brendan was ideally suited to this work in that he loved to travel and was forever curious about new places and cultures. Most of all, he was a great people person treating everyone he met from the poorest farmer to the highest-ranking government official the same.
VIVA was a completely voluntary effort and Brendan never sought any accolades for his work, doing it for the satisfaction and joy it gave him.
In his retirement, Brendan loved having the time to enjoy the simple things in life. His haven was his glasshouse in the garden where he had a chair installed and where he would spend hours relaxing, reading a newspaper or listening to country music on the radio.
A week after his death, Storm Éowyn airlifted his glasshouse into the next world almost as if Brendan had summoned it so he could continue to enjoy its comforts!
Retirement also allowed Brendan and Kathleen to travel and do all the other things his busy career had prevented. His other great joy in his retirement were his three grandchildren, Nathan, Cara and Lauren. Unfortunately, Brendan was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2024 and underwent a challenging treatment regime before eventually succumbing to the effects of the condition in January 2025.
I last met Brendan in December and despite being in a lot of discomfort, he told me that he was hoping to get into good shape by Christmas so that he could enjoy some time with his grandchildren who were flying in from the US.
Brendan is survived by his wife Kathleen, his children Mark, Martina and Paul, Mark’s wife Pauline, his grandchildren, his sister Carmel and last but not least, his many friends at home and abroad.