Ryan, Annie

ANNIE RYAN is a retired school teacher who is best known for her work championing the rights of people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems. Her campaigning in relation to the state mental hospital in Portrane earned her national prominence and she ran in the 1997 general election as an independent candidate on a mental health issue platform. Annie's father Tom Harris took part in the Rising and was one of the witnesses interviewed in the 1940s who walked from Kildare to Dublin to fight at the G.P.O. Nearly fifty years later the release of the records enabled her to read t...