Born: 17 December 1948, Albany Road, Ranelagh, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 23 November 1966, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 31 December 2024, St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin (Rathfanham, Dublin)

Left Society of Jesus: 01 April 1967

Father, Kevin, was an Architect. Mother was Patricia (Moyne).

1 Younger Brother; 3 older and 1 younger Sisters

Educated at Gonzaga College SJ, Dublin

Baptised at St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, Dublin, 23/12/1948
Confirmed at Church of the Holy Name, Beechwood Avenue, Dublin, by Dr Dunne of Dublin, 09/03/1960

Lived in Rathfarnham until his death in 2024

https://rip.ie/death-notice/peter-barry-dublin-rathfarnham-580017

The death has occurred of

Peter Barry
Rathfarnham, Dublin

Peter Barry (Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin), 31st December, 2024. Peacefully, in the wonderful care of the staff at St. Vincent's Private Hospital, surrounded by his loving family. Predeceased by his parents Maureen and Peter and his sister Paula. Peter will be sadly missed by his beloved wife Anne and cherished son Graham. Peter will be greatly missed by his sisters, brother, nieces, nephews, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, extended family and friends.

A celebration of Peter's life will take place on Saturday at 2pm (4th January) in Fanagans Funeral Home, Willbrook, Rathfarnham, D14W029, followed by Cremation in Mount Jerome.

Date Published:
Tuesday 31st December 2024

Date of Death:
Tuesday 31st December 2024

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/peter-barry-one-of-the-foremost-eye-surgeons-of-his-generation-1.2688815

Obituaries
Peter Barry: One of the foremost eye surgeons of his generation
Obituary: He used surgical skill, persuasiveness and humility to achieve the best possible clinical outcomes

Peter Barry FRCS, who has died unexpectedly after a brief illness aged 67 years, was one of the foremost eye surgeons of his generation. As well as being an international ambassador for Irish ophthalmology, he was the national clinical lead for ophthalmology, leading wide-reaching reforms in hospital and community delivery of eye healthcare.

He pioneered major surgical advances in Irish and European ophthalmology: modern cataract surgery and primary vitrectomy for retinal detachment repair in the early 1980s.

Having wide-ranging international impact, he was a cofounder and recently president of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS). In addition to superb surgical outcomes in his own patients, thousands more had safer cataract surgery when he chaired the first international clinical trial proving the benefit of prophylactic antibiotics. This landmark study has now been accepted worldwide as setting the clinical standard of care in dramatically reducing post-operative infection, the most devastating blinding complication of cataract surgery.

Peter James Barry was born in Dublin and educated at Gonzaga College. Being academic, gregarious and quietly religious, he briefly started Jesuit studies but quickly switched to UCD medical school. Clinical training in ophthalmology began at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin, with completion of the majority of his clinical residency at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.

Absolute focus
Fellowship training followed in London and the US in vitreoretinal surgery, then in its infancy, but Moorfields quickly established itself as an international leader under Peter’s mentors, David McLeod, Peter Leaver and Robert Cooling. Appointed consultant ophthalmic surgeon in 1984 to his alma mater, the Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin, he initiated vitreoretinal surgery and maintained a continuous separate retinal detachment rota.

He had a joint appointment with St Vincent’s University Hospital, where he quickly established a dedicated registrar cataract training module.

As ESCRS president, he established three themes: youth, education and research which reflected his lifetime clinical focus. He took an immense interest in fostering the careers of many future ophthalmologists. Combining the attributes of high clinical and surgical acumen, work ethic and attention to detail, his clinics and operating lists were both intense and occasionally dramatic. Mentoring by example, he expected the same absolute focus. Patient empathy was his main driving force and he used his surgical skill, persuasiveness and humility to achieve the best possible clinical outcomes.

Charismatic and debonair
Peter Barry’s Sunday routine began with a ward round at the Eye and Ear Hospital accompanied by his daughter Lisa, followed by ice cream and reading at Mass at St Vincent’s.

Charismatic and debonair, he was great company in social situations and an eloquent protagonist in formal meetings. He was just as happy delivering the Ridley Medal Lecture as sharing clinical woes with a colleague.

He was a devoted family man and he is survived by his wife Carmel and four adult children, David, Stephen, Simon and Lisa.

https://soevision.org/news/peter-barry/

Peter Barry
The SOE Board and Committees would like to extend their sincere sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of Dr Peter Barry, FRCS, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology in St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, who died Thursday, 26 May 2016 after a short illness.

Dr Barry was the senior retinal surgeon at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin. Having completed his training at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London, UK, Dr Barry completed a retinal fellowship in the United States. Dr Barry was a founding member of the ESCRS and served as Treasurer, President, Director and guiding light at ESCRS. He was also an integral part The European Alliance for Vision Research and Ophthalmology.

He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

https://www.escrs.org/eurotimes/peter-barry-1948-2016

PETER BARRY 1948-2016

David Spalton
Published: Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Peter’s sudden and tragic death was a shock for all of us. He was a particularly good friend to me and to many of you who are reading this.
Peter co-organised the European Intraocular Implant Club meeting in Dublin, Ireland in 1990. It was at this meeting that the decision was taken to change the name of the society to the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons, and from that time Peter served as a board member, treasurer, then as president, and finally
as a director.

Throughout all these years he was a steady guiding hand, the work of the society never far from his heart, and the formative role he had in the success of the ESCRS cannot be overstated. In my opinion this success was due to two strong personality attributes – the first being a superb ability to chair a committee meeting, and the second being a dogged determination to see something through to the end once he had started on it, strongly aided by some Irish charm and a puckish sense of humour.

Time and time again I would watch in admiration as, during a committee meeting, after a sometimes lengthy and rather stringent discussion, he would summarise the problem and come up with the common-sense solution that we had all missed, which we could all agree on, and then we would move on to the next item on the agenda.

Through his friendship with Ulf Stenevi and Mats Lundström, he led the way in developing the society’s studies in the prevention of postoperative endophthalmitis and benchmarking surgical outcomes with the
EUREQUO database.

His greatest memorial will be the endophthalmitis study which eventually turned out to be the biggest antibiotic study ever undertaken. He conceived the project, raised the finance and put together a dedicated and expert team, and then saw the project through the trials and tribulations of regulation, bureaucracy and recruitment until its
eventual success.

As we all know now, the intracameral injection of cefuroxime at the end of surgery reduces the incidence of infection five-fold. The study has become the standard of care in many countries and we, as surgeons, and more importantly our patients have good reason to be grateful to him. Few of us will ever leave such a legacy.

Peter was educated at Gonzaga College in Dublin. At one time he contemplated a career in the Church and few of us knew he retained a strong Christian faith throughout his life. However, he went into medicine instead, graduating from University College Dublin in 1974, where he won the Medical Society Gold Medal and also the Gibson Cup, the Irish Medical Schools Debating Cup (perhaps an early sign of later achievements).

He was a resident at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London from 1976 to 1979, followed by a retina fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. After this he returned to a consultant appointment at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.

His funeral took place on the most perfect Irish summer day at the church opposite St Vincent’s Hospital, with a congregation packed to standing room only with his family, his friends and colleagues, golfing chums, and I suspect a large number of grateful patients too. Lisa, his 20-year-old daughter, with great courage and fortitude, gave a eulogy none of those present will ever forget. It was an incredibly sad end to a life so well lived and we all extend our sympathy to his wife Carmel, and his children David, Stephen, Simon and Lisa.

Prof David Spalton is President of the ESCRS

https://www.vision-research.eu/index.php?id=1058

Professor Peter Barry passed away

It is with very great sadness that the EVI announces the death of our colleague Dr Peter Barry, who passed away on Thursday, 26 May 2016 after a short illness.

He was a person of great vision who made an immense contribution not only to the success of the ESCRS but to the wider world of ophthalmology, as indicated by our featured article under http://www.vision-research.eu/index.php?id=888 in remembrance of Peter

Peter Barry was head of the Department of Ophthalmology in St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin and was the senior retinal surgeon at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, Dublin. Having completed his training at Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London, one of the largest eye hospitals in the world, Peter completed a retinal fellowship in the USA.

Peter has served on the Board of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons for over twenty years first - as Treasurer and as President of this prestigious Society. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Irish College of Ophthalmology, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons, and the United Kingdom and Ireland Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons.

Peter will be sorely missed.

Born: 01 June 1934, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1960, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Ordained: 1972, Keffi, Nasarawa State, Nigeria (as an SMA)
Died: 27 March 2010, London England

Left Society of Jesus: 21 August 1961

Originally C of I - Baptised Catholic 1957 - Father (Augustus) a C of I clergyman, so moved around Dublin regularly to live, (Lower Kimmage Road, Terenure; Finglas Rectory; Kill Glebe, Blackrock and then Rathmichael Rectory, Shankhill)but lived for a while also at Glenealy, County Wicklow. He also lived at Stamer Street, Portobello, Dublin.

Had a BA from Trinity College Dublin

2 Sisters. At time of entry parents were separated. Mother was living then at Leinster Road, Rathmines.

Baptised at Harold’s Cross Protestant Church, then in Catholic Church at University Church, St Stephen’s Green 08/12/1957. Confirmed at Clonliffe, January 1958

Had been a Deacon in the Church of Scotland. Taught at St Conleth’s, Dublin for three years

Educated at Avoca School, Blackrock (Newpark Comprehensive, Newtownpark Ave). Had a BA from Trinity College Dublin

Went to Divinity School at Mountjoy Square, Dublin. Lived at Morehampton Road, Dublin and then at Merton Drive, Ranelagh, and then in a flat with his sister at Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin.

Joined Society of African Missions (SMA)

https://sma.ie/fr-douglas-bluett-sma/

Fr Douglas H Bluett SMA dies in London

The SMA British Province has lost its senior missionary with the death of Fr Douglas (Dougie) Bluett in a London hospital on Monday, 27 March 2010.

In recent years he had suffered from cancer though never allowed it to dim his missionary calling. He continually requested a return to front line service in Africa though his illness meant that his wish could not be granted.

Fr Bluett, born in Dublin in 1934 was raised in the Church of Ireland before converting to Catholicism and becoming a Catholic priest.

He was ordained in Keffi, diocese of Makurdi, by Archbishop Peter Y Jatau of Kaduna, Nigeria in 1972. For 36 years Fr Bluett ministered in several parishes in the diocese of Makurdi, most notably Doma. He was a renowned teacher and for many years taught at St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Makurdi. He had the great joy of seeing part the area where he worked made into a separate diocese, Lafia.

Fr Bluett is mourned by his sister, extended family, friends and his confreres in the British Province as well as in the wider Society.

Fr Rob Morland informs us that, in accordance with his wishes Fr Dougie will be buried alongside other SMA colleagues Manchester.

Born: 24 October 1890, Fitzgibbon Street, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 07 September 1907, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly

Left Society of Jesus: 1909

Father was a Professor of elocution and he and Mother lived at Lower Leeson Street, Dublin

Lived at Fitzgibbon Street for two years, then Clontarf for eight, and then Lower Leeson Street.

One of three boys and four girls.

Early education at home then at Loreto College, St Stephen’s Green, and then at home again. After that he went to Belvedere College - 1899-1907.

Born: 21 November 1923, Kevit Castle, Crossdoney, County Cavan
Entered: 07 September 1942, St Mary's, Emo, County Laois
Died: 25 November 2012. Bloomfield Care Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin City, County Dublin

Left Society of Jesus: 28 August 1944 on health grounds

Father, Frederick was a doctor and farmer. Mother was Isabella.

Youngest of four boys with four sisters.

Early education at a Convent school in Kildare he then went to Clongowes Wood College SJ for seven years.

Baptised at St Felim's Catholic Church, Ballinagh Road, Bellananagh, County Cavan
Confirmed in Killashee Convent, Kilcullen, County Kildare, by Dr Cullen of Kildare and Leighlin, 22/04/1934

https://www.dib.ie/biography/smith-louis-patrick-frederick-a10051#:~:text=Smith%2C%20Louis%20Patrick%20Frederick%20(1923,wife%20Isabella%20(n%C3%A9e%20Smith).

Smith, Louis Patrick Frederick
Contributed by
Clavin, Terry
Smith, Louis Patrick Frederick (1923–2012), agricultural economist and academic, was born on 21 December 1923 in Kevit Castle in Crossdoney, Co. Cavan, the youngest of eight children of Dr Frederick Paul Smith, a farmer and ophthalmologist of Kevit Castle, and his wife Isabella (née Smith). He was born into a thriving branch of an ancient Cavan family, known originally as O'Gowan. His grandfather Philip Smith bought the Kevit Castle estate in the 1850s and later became Cavan's first catholic JP. Of his uncles, Philip H. Law Smith was county court judge for Limerick; Louis Smith, the crown solicitor for Cavan; and Alfred J. Smith an internationally respected UCD professor of midwifery and gynaecology. As well as having a successful ophthalmological practice, his father was elected to the first Cavan County Council and helped establish the local cooperative movement.

Louis was educated in Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, before studying economics and history in UCD, graduating with a first class honours BA (1947). Continuing in UCD, he won the Coyne Memorial Scholarship while receiving a first class honours MA in economics (1948), writing a thesis comparing agriculture in Northern Ireland and the Republic. He also studied law at King's Inns, passing his bar exam finals, but preferred a career in economics and spent a year at Manchester University researching British agriculture and getting lecturing experience.

In January 1949 he sat the civil service examination for the position of third secretary of the Department of External Affairs. Despite otherwise coming first by a distance, he failed the oral Irish test, which he retook unsuccessfully in August and then September. The examiners were unmoved by his protests that the test was unfair so on 28 November the cabinet intervened by temporarily appointing him economic assistant in the trade section of the Department of External Affairs. This was at the behest of the external affairs minister, Seán MacBride (qv), who wanted Smith to explore the potential for trade liberalisation.

In 1951 he joined the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) for which he organised agricultural cooperatives in the northern parts of the state. Farmers were initially suspicious of the 'man from Dublin', but were won over by his lucidity and soft-spoken decency. That year he married Sheila Brady of Herbert Park, Dublin. They lived in Dartry, Dublin, later settling in Donnybrook, Dublin, and had three sons and three daughters. Tall and with refined features rendered distinguished by his prematurely grey hair (a family trait), Smith relaxed by playing tennis at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club. He also enjoyed cycling, boating, rambling and do-it-yourself work, including furniture making, and was fluent in French.

Formatively impressed by what he saw on a research trip to Scandinavia, he lauded the progressive cooperative farming that prevailed there as a model for an Irish agricultural sector resistant to modern scientific and business methods. He concluded that Ireland's weak social structures had bred a suffocating state paternalism towards agriculture and that strong vocational institutions were needed to counteract this. Drawing upon his training as an economist and personal experience of cooperatives, he later wrote The evolution of agricultural co-operation (1961), which examined the application of the cooperative principle in various countries with a characteristic emphasis on the practical over the theoretical.

In 1954 he left the IAOS to join Macra na Feirme, a vocational association that trained young farmers. He directed its activities in economics and marketing, and became involved in efforts underway towards creating a farmers union spanning all commodity interests. Appointed economics adviser to the National Farmers Association (NFA) formed in January 1955, he helped establish the system of commodity committees that served as the basis of the NFA's organisation. (His brother Alfred Myles Smith served as the NFA's legal adviser and later as president of its Cavan executive and vice president of its Ulster executive.) At this time Louis worked a ninety-hour week making the case for the NFA to farmers.

His main function was to conduct research, an important role given that agricultural policy had previously been developed on a non-factual basis in response to short-term political exigencies. Part of a vanguard of experts who placed the Irish economic debate on a firm statistical footing, he established the NFA's credibility by churning out facts and informed arguments, clashing regularly with politicians and civil servants discomfited by the advent of a well-organised farmers lobby. Through his public lectures and newspaper pieces, he exerted an important influence over young farmers, most notably by persuading them of the advantages of cooperative livestock marts over unsanitary and inefficient cattle fairs.

From 1954 he combined his work in farm organisations with lecturing in agricultural economics and international trade in the UCD economics department. He also introduced courses on European institutions and was awarded a Ph.D. by UCD in 1955. His dual roles complemented each other, bringing home to him the importance of linking agricultural education with research. He criticised the government for failing to do so and also for starving agricultural education and research of resources and for maintaining political control over the farming advisory services. He identified a lack of training and basic schooling as the besetting weakness of Irish farming.

His research for the NFA revealed that Irish agriculture was unproductive and undercapitalised, but that much of this was attributable to government policies which lumbered farmers with high input and transport costs, arbitrary rates, mistaken breeding programs, volatile prices, weak cooperative marketing and export restrictions. Above all he showed how the strategy of seeking trade preferences for Irish farm produce in Britain had run aground once Britain began protecting its farmers through subsidies rather than tariffs. With their traditional British outlet emerging as the industrial world's most open food market, Irish farmers received the lowest prices in western Europe and became increasingly reliant on exporting unfinished cattle, a form of production that provided the least employment.

Pointing to the European common market as a secure, well-paying alternative, he highlighted the untenable nature of Ireland's position as a small, politically isolated food-exporting country, particularly as generously protected continental farmers produced ever-larger surpluses, which were then dumped on the British market. His arguments convinced previously sceptical farmers that there was a political solution to their economic difficulties, though his assertion that Ireland could join the EEC even if the UK did not was unrealistic. He was a founding member of the Irish Council of the European Movement, established in 1954, serving as its chairman (1962–5).

Having become a full-time UCD lecturer, he resigned his position in the NFA in January 1963, continuing for a time on the NFA's National Council. He received a doctorate in economic science from UCD in 1963 for his published work and became an associate professor of political economy (international trade) in 1969. Enthusiastic and engaging as a teacher, if at times impenetrable and absent-minded, he co-wrote an economics textbook, Elements of economics (1969), and expressed public sympathy for the late 1960s student protests against the UCD administration. A long-serving president of the Irish Council for Overseas Students, he was a council member of the Irish Federation of University Teachers and active in the Academic Staff Association as a committee member and secretary.

Continuing to comment regularly in the print media on farming, the EEC and economics, he had a well-regarded weekly farming column in the Irish Independent (1965–69) under the penname 'Agricola'. In 1971 he contributed to a booklet outlining the farming benefits to be derived from Ireland's membership of the EEC and later disputed claims made by anti-EEC campaigners concerning high food prices within EEC member states. After Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, he opposed efforts to subject the newly enriched farming sector to meaningful taxation. He also argued influentially that Ireland's currency link with a depreciating sterling reduced the benefits of EEC membership by causing high inflation.

He was a director in a firm of management consultants and of the South Dublin Provident Society, and was retained as an economics consultant by various semi-state agencies, the European Commission and AIB. His 1971 AIB appointment reflected his successful efforts to encourage the banks to lend more to farmers. During the 1960s and 1970s, he published a labour survey of the Cooley peninsula as well as studies of the Irish food processing and retailing sectors, the finance costs associated with Irish farming and the compliance costs associated with the Irish tax system. He condemned the high tax policies of the 1970s and 1980s for discouraging savings, employment and investment, and devised tax reform proposals on behalf of the Irish Federation for the Self-Employed. A longstanding member of the Christian Family Movement, he drew attention to the rapid 1970s increase in Irish working mothers and annoyed feminists by suggesting this would put families under strain and encourage lesbianism.

He co-wrote two histories, Milk to market (1989) and Farm organisations in Ireland: a century of progress (1996): the former capably described the role of the Leinster Milk Producers Association in supplying Dublin; the latter contains invaluable anecdotal material relating to the founding and early years of the NFA, though as a history it is workmanlike, partial and sketchy in places. After retiring from UCD in 1988, he kept active by playing tennis into his mid-eighties before switching to snooker and swimming. Following a long illness, he died in the Bloomfield Care Centre, Rathfarnham, Dublin, on 25 November 2012. He was buried in Mount Venus Cemetery, Rathfarnham, and left a will disposing of €1.26 million.

Sources
GRO, (birth, marriage cert.); Ir. Independent, passim, esp.: 2 Nov. 1943; 29 Oct. 1948; 24 May 1963 (profile); 14 Aug. 1979; NA, Dept. of the Taoiseach, S14603, 'Irish test for the post of third secretary: complaint of Louis P. F. Smith' (1949); Louis P. F. Smith, 'Agricultural education by co-operatives', The Irish Monthly, vol. 79, no. 935 (May 1951), 224–30; Nationalist and Leinster Times, 13 Dec. 1952; 15 Jan. 1965; Ir. Times, passim, esp.: 23 Oct. 1954; 3 Aug. 1955; 4 Aug. 1956 (profile); 21 Sept. 1957; 25 Aug. 1959; 28 Nov. 2012; 15 Dec. 2012 (obit.); Louis P. F. Smith, 'The role of farmers organizations', Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 44, no. 173 (spring 1955), 49–56; Kilkenny People, 6 Aug. 1955; Cork Examiner, 6 Mar. 1956; Irish Farmers' Journal, 24 Aug. (profile), 14 Dec. 1957; 4 Nov. 1961; 1 May 1971; 1 Dec. 2012; Ir. Press, passim, esp.: 29 Oct. 1957; 6 May, 11 Nov. 1969; 2 May 1972; National Observer, vol i, no. 1 (July 1958); Southern Star, 16 July 1960; Sunday Press, 27 Aug., 29 Oct. 1961; 3 Nov. 1963; 24 Apr. 1966; Kerryman, 17 Feb. 1962; Sunday Independent, 27 Oct. 1974; 19 May 2013; Hibernia, 2 May 1975; European Opinion, Dec. 1976; Report of the President; University College Dublin, 1988–1989, 185–6; Louis P. F. Smith, Farm organisations in Ireland: a century of progress (1996); Gary Murphy, In search of the promised land: the politics of post war Ireland (2009)

Forename: Louis, Patrick, Frederick
Surname: Smith
Gender: Male
Career: Agriculture, Education, Scholarship, Social Sciences
Religion: Catholic
Born 21 December 1923 in Co. Cavan
Died 25 November 2012 in Co. Dublin