Newcastle’s oldest person Molly will celebrate her 98th birthday this year
By Brendan Grehan
This September Molly (Mary) Delaney will celebrate her 98th birthday and is determined to ‘go on’ and collect her cheque from Áras an Uachtaráin in 2020.
Molly celebrated her position as the oldest person in Newcastle on Monday, May 21, with a reception in the local Community Centre surrounded by family and friends.
Molly surrounded by her family
Born in Ballywilliam just outside New Ross, she was 17 when she moved up to Esker House in Lucan. Then it was a thriving dairy farm which supplied Lucan and the surrounding areas.
She then moved to Killinarden where she lived on Gibney’s farm with her husband and their children. Molly’s daughter, Jean, sadly passed away in her 40s and her husband Patrick passed away a few years ago.
“Molly” moved to Newcastle 43 years ago when her son, Seamus, got a job in Peamount and she has been there ever since.
“Molly” still lives in her home in Newcastle where she raised her eight children.
Her eldest son, Seamus, told The Echo: “It’s a two-bedroom house and there was plenty of room for us. Now that we have all moved out, she says she has no room. She likes to hang on to things.”
Seamus puts down his mother’s longevity to hard work.
He says: “She still lives at home. She is 110 per cent. I would put it down to hard work. She raised us eight kids and did a good job of it.”
Asked what she put down to her long life, Molly replied, “hard work and good wholesome Irish food”.
