The O’Flaherty Family have been in business in Galway for centuries, with records dating back to the late 1800’s when the family operated a delivery mail service for Galway east and west with horse and trap.
In the decades to follow with the dawn of the motor car, the O’Flaherty family maintained the postal service to and from Oranmore and Gort in the south of Galway and Carraroe and Clifden to the West, along with establishing a small hackney service from a converted thatched cottage on Upper Domnick street in Galway city.
It was Patrick O’Flaherty and his wife Agnes (née Staunton ) who in 1901 established a small shop, motor garage and a funeral service. They advertised “Galway’s leading hire service in luxurious charabancs and motors (touring and saloon ). All tours through beautiful Connemara radiate regularly from O’Flaherty’s”.
Together with a dedicated and loyal staff, they offered essential assistance to bereaved families across Galway city and county also, supplying coffins alongside horse-drawn transport that steadily evolved into an elegant carriage service.
In a display of quiet defiance, Patrick Junior insisted on overseeing the funeral transportation for the late Fr. Griffin during a period of intense political turmoil. Owing to the perilous circumstances surrounding Fr. Griffin’s controversial death, public interments were strongly discouraged for safety reasons.
Undeterred, Patrick managed the funeral arrangements; however, shortly thereafter, he was tragically bayoneted in Barna, Co. Galway, and placed back onto a mail cart. Though the horse faithfully made its way back toward town, Patrick fell into a roadside ditch near Blackrock, where he was subsequently discovered and pronounced dead at Seamount Hospital later that evening.
Shortly after this, the O’Flaherty Family commissioned the first motor hearse in Galway.
In 1927, a local newspaper stated that, “The enterprising motor garage proprietor Michael O’Flaherty (son of Patrick ) was the proud possessor of a fleet of modern omnibuses and charabancs. His principle, which might well be emulated by those desiring to encourage local manufacturers and traders, was to purchase engines and chassis and get the bodies built to his own design at home. He was the first in Galway to give an order for a motor body to the local firm of Messrs Fahy Brothers, Coach Builders, Forster Street, and since then, they have built 17 bodies for him, including motor hearses.”
Up until 1927, the mail vans travelling between Galway and Gort/Ballyvaughan, Galway and Shrule and Galway and Carraroe were run by O’Flahertys and they also served the useful purpose of carrying passengers. When the Post office introduced their own vans to convey the mails and in order to meet the inconveniences which the discontinuance of the passenger services would cause, O’Flaherty’s introduced a charabanc service for the Connemara districts.
Their service department was in Pump Lane. At the end of 1932, they moved the service station out to part of what had been known as Feeney’s Marsh, described in 1681 as the “Wett piece of ground mearing on the highway to Kilcorkey” and part of what was locally known as Tom Mannin’s Bog. That ‘highway’ would eventually become known as Fr Griffin Road.
The illustration is a drawing of the proposed building in splendid isolation with a large wall around the boundary. It was the first building on the road and the photograph, taken in 1934, shows many of the staff (most of whom had worked in Dominick Street ) posing with the taxi fleet. They include, from right to left, Michael O’Flaherty, Mick Hennessy, Michael Tyrrell, Jimmy Flynn, Tommy Hamill, Michael Feeney, Eddie Halloran, Willie Tyrrell, Pat Tyrrell, Stanley McCarthy and John Fahy.
Michael O’Flaherty was a member of the Urban District Council, and his son Paddy, was an elected member of Galway Corporation who served two terms as Mayor. During his time as Mayor, Paddy became one of the founding members of the Irish Association of Funeral Directors.
He, along with likeminded colleagues identified a need to create a network of funeral professionals to improve the services and facilities available to people at the time of a funeral. One of the first funeral parlours in the West was developed from an old stable behind the family home on Upper Dominick Street in the early 1970’s (now accessed via Munster Avenue ).
Funeral parlours were new at that time and when questioned about its development, Paddy O’Flaherty’s reply was always. ‘Wasn’t a stable good enough for our Lord, so isn’t it good enough for you’? Well in fairness to Paddy, it was a very luxurious stable indeed, and he was very proud of this facility. There was a need at that time to provide a room where families could have a wake without ‘drink’. He also recognized the need and the merits of having a neutral open space for those who needed space to ‘wake’ their relatives away from the home. This space was made available to funeral directors from all around the county.
In the 1970’s, as a young girl, Paddy’s daughter Cathriona began working, like many, “in the family business”. In her early 20’s, she moved to Dublin and trained as a funeral director at one of the capital’s well known firms – Fanagans Funeral Directors – before returning home to specialise and develop the O’Flaherty system for funerals in Galway. Following in her fathers footsteps, Cathriona soon became the first female president of the Irish Association of Funeral Directors.
Since then, in her 30+ years as Managing Director, she along with her husband, Willie Conneely, who also comes from a well known family of funeral directors in Galway (Conneelys Funeral Directors ) have devoted their lives to improving the essential service in Galway.
Today, two of their sons work in the funeral business together towards the shared mission of improving the service in Galway.
Colm (O’Flaherty ) Conneely, is the fifth generation of family to carry O’Flaherty Funeral Directors and Ronan (O’Flaherty ) Conneely shares in this mission at Conneelys Funeral Directors on Flood Street. The two family businesses run independently of each other but with the shared mission of supporting Galway families at a time of need.
