“EDUCATE a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community,” the old proverb goes. And this bygone adage rang perfectly true with me when I recently met up with Fine Gael councillor Noreen Stokes in the sleepy hamlet of Old Pallas in East Limerick.
Moments after arriving at the crossroads of the picturesque townland, like something from another era, Noreen couldn’t be missed as she arrives up the road with her smiling face emblazoned all over her car. There’s clearly another general election run in her, I tell myself, taking a mental note.
The big grin, of course, is the Cappamore Kilmallock area representative’s trademark. Small in stature she may be, but her larger-than-life, fun-loving nature would fill any room. A teacher with Limerick and Clare Education Training Board, Cllr Stokes is a little nervy when she first greets me. To try and put her at ease, I assure her that I have not come out to her neck of the woods to play tricks on her.
“I’ll probably do that to myself,” she jests.
We are a stone’s throw from the cottage in which Noreen was born, sometime in “the last half century or more”, as she tells me her family history, played out on the very streets we stand and the lush fields all around us, with great pride and passion.
Pallasgreen, as it is today known, is in the Fine Gael woman’s blood.
“We have a soccer club, which I was secretary of for 16 years, up until quite recently. I’m a member of everything in the community and always have been,” she proudly states.
The eldest of four, Noreen has three younger brothers. Every one of them, herself included, she admits, “live and breathe sport”.
A candidate in the last general election, she’s just had a knee replacement, which doesn’t appear to have slowed her down in the slightest as we chat by the busy roadside.
Grafting on the small family farm as a young girl, she insists, did her no harm, and clearly instilled a strong work ethic. Her political ambition, as her beaming smile on the side of her car attests to, is equally evident. Related to Limerick Fine Gael TD and Minister, Kieran O’Donnell, on her mother’s side, she wants to see more achieved for rural County Limerick, including investment in rural housing policy, providing grants for community organisations, supporting farm incomes, and increasing town and village renewal.
‘My first and foremost loyalty will be to my party’
“I have been a member of Fine Gael since I was 18 and I will always be a member of Fine Gael. My first and foremost loyalty will be to my party. My father joined in 1964, so that will tell you the long relationship that is there. Look, it’s a tough game to be in, but my family have always been affiliated with Fine Gael,” she tells me.
“Since I was seven or eight years of age, I wanted to be a councillor and I love it, I really do. I love being able to help people. It doesn’t matter if it’s Johnny or Paddy that comes for an application form. If I can give them that application form, if I can assist them, I am thrilled,” she enthuses.
Noreen went to college as a mature student in 1991 after having lost interest in education first time round after her Inter Cert, instead opting to work on the farm with her late father, who sadly passed in 2022.
When she did bravely return to the classroom in her local secondary school, it was to the same principal she had as a younger student, only this time round it was her younger sibling’s friends that were her classmates.
‘Who does she think she is?’
Hardworking, reliable, and vivacious with it, Cllr Stokes has a lust for life which is purely infectious. Community is still very much at the centre of her universe, and would be, it seems, what keeps her bursting with energy.
“After passing my Leaving Cert, I went to work in St Camillus’ Hospital as an attendant. You didn’t have the nice name of healthcare assistant back then. I left there then in 1997 and retrained and went to Dell Computers where I got a scholarship to college. I went back and did my diploma, I did my degree, I did my graduate diploma in technical communications in between that before I did my Masters. I was delighted with myself as I wanted to make my better potential. I was proud of myself, because I know some people were probably going, ‘’who does she think she is?’ The usual,” she quips.
“But, you know, even though I was elected, I’m still involved in every organisation in my community and I have been doing that all my life. I’m very strong minded, I’m very determined, and I’m hugely motivated,” Cllr Stokes, who teaches information technology, computing, and healthcare skills’.
Noreen loves people, and particularly working with young people. She says she believes in open communication, listening to the people, and working to make a difference in the lives of all those she represents.
I tell her I am keen to know where her drive comes from.
“I suppose it comes from my family. We’re all very driven. We know where we want to go, what we want to do, and we have a good work ethic,” she explains.
“I’m just after taking a few longer loops to get where I wanted to be, but I now feel I have all my ducks in a row. I do like a challenge and it is my community that pushes me forward to work in their best interest. I’m stuck into everything in my community. As the saying goes, if you want something done, ask a busy person and they’ll do it for you.”
Cllr Stokes says she is ” passionate about my community because that’s where we strive”.
“If the community closes down, then there’s nowhere for us. I’m elected to work for the people and that’s what I am going to do. I’m going to help with that little bit of clout. I’m going to do what I need to do and make the contacts I need to make that work for me.
“Because I’m a woman, I would be quite respectful to a point, but I’m elected to do a job, I didn’t join the Council to make friends. I’m here to work to the best of my ability. I have been working with communities all my life so I bring with me the necessary life skills.”
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme