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Judith McGilligan was born on 22 August 1941 in Dublin. She began her career as a ballerina, attending the National Ballet School and eventually working for Leonide Massine's European Ballet. She later danced with Janine Charrat's company, Ballet de France. Having sustained a knee injury, she turned to acting and is known for her roles in Ryan's Hope (1975), The Edge of Night (1956) and Stop the World: I Want to Get Off (1966).

Anne (Annie) McGowan née Browne (1879-1965) was the daughter of Patrick Browne, a baker, and his wife Susan, of Clare Street, Limerick. In 1900, she married Michael McGowan (1878-1942) whose father Daniel McGuane (1843-1920) was originally from Poulwillian, Miltown Malbay, County Clare. Daniel, a tailor, had come to Limerick in the 1860s with his wife Mary Anne Foley, a seamstress from Kilkee, to run a business premises on the corner of Catherine Street and Roches Street. When in Limerick, Daniel changed the spelling of his surname from McGuane McGowan.

Michael McGowan worked first on the railway in Limerick and later in Inchicore Works in Dublin. In 1915, he joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers seeking adventure and an escape from the large family he now had to take care of. Michael was sent to the Western Front where he was poisoned by gas and evacuated to a hospital in Birmingham. He was discharged from the Army in 1919. His wife returned to Limerick during the war and lived with her children in Doyle’s Cottages off John’s Street, which was not far from Limerick Jail. In order to support her mother, Anne’s eldest child Sarah (Sally) got a job as a printer’s assistant in McKern’s Printing Works in Limerick city and, on her mother’s insistence, joined the Transport Union. When Sarah and 11 other girls were offered a pay increase of two shillings and six pence on condition that they leave the Union, Sarah was the only girl to refuse the offer as a result of which she was sacked. She later worked as a waitress in a Catherine Street restaurant.

During and after the Civil War, Annie and Sarah McGowan and Annie’s son Timothy (Tadgh) McGowan delivered food and parcels of books, magazines and cigarettes to Republican prisoners in Limerick Jail and continued to send these to prisoners transferred to the Curragh internment camp in County Kildare. Given the family connections with West Clare, most of the prisoners they assisted were from that area. One of the correspondents, Thomas Keane, was from Carrigaholt, where a Keane’s pub exists to this day.

Edward Patrick McGrath was born in New York City on 8 December 1929, the son of Edward Patrick McGrath and Elizabeth née Breen. His parents had emigrated to the United States from Belfast. He received a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1960.

Edward McGrath began his career in journalism at the New York Herald Tribune in the 1950s. Over the years, he worked in publishing and public relations. During the final twelve years of his life he was president of McGrath Associates, a corporate communications consulting firm. Edward was also a writer. His published non-fiction works included articles on such far-ranging subjects as whaling and witchcraft. He had an interest in Irish literature and wrote fiction for personal pleasure. In 1974, Edward and his wife moved from New York City to Weston, Connecticut where among other things he held the position of chairman of the Library Board. Edward McGrath died in Weston on 23 August 1994.

Michael Meehan is a retired academic and former member of the ruling body of An Coimisiún.

Katarína Mojžišová is a Slovakian dance artist who worked in Ireland between 2005 and 2012. Born in Uherské Hradišt? in the former Czechoslovakia, she gained an MA in Dance from VŠMU Bratislava in 1999. Her diverse career includes dance, film, theatre, and performance art. She has a particular interest in experimental dance works and cross-genre projects, such as O1, a 7-hour performance created in collaboration with sound artist Robin Parmar in 2006, and The Rite of Spring, Limerick (Commissions Award of The Arts Council and Limerick City Council), performed in the Parkway Shopping Centre on the day of vernal equinox in 2007. She has also created numerous choreographic works supported by art institutions and dance companies, including Parsifal Project (commissioned by Framemakers Symposium 2005); Dragon (supported by Daghdha Dance Company and selected for Dublin Fringe Festival 2006); and The Auction (commissioned by Excursions: Performance Festival 2005 and selected for Have-U-Met-Nosti Festival, Dublin, 2007). Katarína was also involved in the former Mentoring Programme of Daghdha Dance Company and has lectured on dance and performance at the University of Limerick and the Sculpture and Combined Media of Limerick School of Art and Design.

Joan Denise Moriarty was a seminal character in the development of ballet in Ireland, both at amateur and professional levels. Little is known of her early life, including her date and place of birth. She was brought up in England and studied ballet in her youth with Marie Rambert. In 1933 her family returned to their native Mallow, where a year later Moriarty set up her first school of dance. In 1940, she established the Moriarty School of Dancing in Cork. She was also the founder of Cork Ballet Company (1947-1993) and Irish Theatre Ballet (1959-1964), which in 1963 merged with Patricia Ryan's National Ballet Company to form the short-lived National Ballet (1963-1964). The third ballet company associated with Moriarty was the Irish Ballet Company, later renamed Irish National Ballet, founded by the government in 1973 and financed by the Arts Council until 1989, when the funding was withdrawn and the company was forced to disband.

Moriarty was also a noted choreographer and drew inspiration from traditional Irish dance, a dance form in which she also excelled. Some of her best known ballets include Puck Fair (1948), The Children of Lír (1950), Papillons (1952), West Cork Ballad (1961), Devil to Pay (1962), Lugh of the Golden Arm (1977) and, perhaps most famously, The Playboy of the Western World (1978).

Joan Denise Moriarty continued her work with the Cork Ballet Company until the end of her life. She died in Dublin on 24 January 1992.

Mary Anne Mulcahy (née O’Keeffe) was born in 1927 in Mallow and first became interested in Irish dancing at the age of seven as a pupil of Joan Denise Moriarty, then the only Irish dancing teacher in the area. She later trained with Cormac O’Keeffe in Cork city. Having acquired teaching qualifications c. 1947, she established the Mulcahy School of Irish Dancing, which is now run by her daughter Breda. She also qualified as an adjudicator c. 1966. Mary Mulcahy remains well known in the Irish dancing circles and continues to travel around the world with pupils of the Mulcahy School of Irish Dancing.