‘As a teenager, I had a lot of love to give to those kids’ – what it’s like to grow up with 50 foster siblings

Mayo woman Fiona Neary became acutely aware of the failings in the Irish care system in her childhood. Here, she talks about her love for the many children who were placed with her family, the secrecy over mental health issues, and why opening a rape crisis centre in her native Castlebar was a no-brainer

Fiona Neary. Photo: Anne Marie Bostock

Tanya Sweeney

Eleven years ago, Fiona Neary was giving a presentation at the United Nations Headquarters in New York when she got a phone call she’ll never forget: her mother, Chriss, who was in palliative care after a bone cancer diagnosis, was nearing kidney failure and was on her deathbed. Neary got back home to Castlebar from the States just in time to join her father Seamus and siblings Áine and Seán for Chriss’s final hours.

Joining the family at Chriss’s removal were many foster siblings from some 60 placements over a three-decade period. Neary was amazed and gladdened to meet foster children that had lived with her family — some for weeks, others for months and years. Some of them, she didn’t even recognise as adults. Neary was also reunited with social workers she hadn’t seen since her teenage years, many of whom were keen to say goodbye to the matriarch with a huge heart.