Staff of St Paul’s High School gathered for the Celebration of Mass to mark the end of the 2025/26 academic year on Friday 26 June.

Guest of honour, Mrs Alison Boyle, is congratulated on her retirement from the staff of St Paul’s by Mr Daithi Murray, Principal, Mrs Michelle Murphy, Bursar, Mrs Mary McMahon, Vice-Principal and Mr Colm Murphy, Vice-Principal

The afternoon, organised with great care, brought the whole staff together one final time before the summer to give thanks for the year behind them and to honour colleagues moving on.

After Mass, Principal, Dáithí Murray, thanked staff and reflected on the year that had just passed. He reminded colleagues that a school is not its building, its results or its inspection report, but is defined by what its people do when it matters, and he praised the staff for answering that test again and again throughout the year, not in what they said but in what they did.

Mr Murray noted that the school had opened the year celebrating the highest set of A Level results in its history, while keeping the focus where it belongs: on good teaching, on one another, and on the young people the school serves. He spoke of a year that had asked a great deal of the community, and of the kindness, care and dedication shown by staff in its hardest hours and its ordinary days alike.

The Principal led the gathering in remembering those lost during the year. The community held in its prayers John McSorley, Denise Hagan, and Michael Warde, the school’s founding Principal, who built St Paul’s and led it through its first thirty years. Mr Murray also kept in his thoughts all in the community who have lost loved ones this year or who are caring for family at home.

Marking Milestones

In keeping with tradition, the afternoon also marked happier milestones in the lives of staff. The school offered its warmest congratulations to Deirbhle McNicholl and Stephen Murray, both due to marry later in the summer, and sent its love and best wishes to Áine McElroy, who was married in Monaghan that very afternoon.

The gathering also celebrated this year’s silver jubilarians, marking twenty-five years of service to the school. Congratulations were extended to Tohiln Murney, Gabriel Morris, and to the Principal himself, Dáithí Murray, all of whom first came through the doors of St Paul’s in September 2001.

Retiring Colleagues

Mr Murray then turned to the colleagues retiring this summer who, between them, have given nearly one hundred and twenty years of service to St Paul’s.

Catherine Rafferty retired on 31 May after more than thirty years. Catherine taught Science across three decades, served as a Head of Year, and latterly as the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead, carrying many of the school’s most vulnerable young people through the most difficult days of their lives. Mr Murray thanked her for her service and for her care.

Jim Murray steps back from his teaching and from the steady leadership of Physics. Quiet and unassuming, Jim has been a consummate professional who simply wanted the best for his pupils and quietly made sure they got it. A steady hand as a Post-16 Form Teacher for many years, he leaves a great many young people the better for having known him. The school wished him a long and happy retirement.

Carmel Hearty has taken the decision to step back from her role as a much-valued Classroom Assistant in the Vocational Education department to look after her health. Carmel worked closely with some of the school’s most vulnerable pupils, looking out for their pastoral and emotional needs and advocating for them when they could not find their own voice. Mr Murray noted that she has not had it easy in recent years, and that staff have kept her in their thoughts and prayers throughout. Carmel will be hugely missed by everyone who worked alongside her.

Guest of Honour: Alison Boyle

The afternoon belonged, above all, to the Guest of Honour, Alison Boyle, who joined the gathering with her mother, May, to mark her retirement after more than twenty years as a Classroom Assistant in St Paul’s.

Mr Murray told staff that when you sit down to write about a colleague at the end of a long career, you go looking for the stories, but that with Alison there was no need to look. Every single person he asked had said the same thing: kind, caring, thoughtful. A friend to everyone, who put others first and saw the good in everyone. You do not earn a verdict that unanimous by accident, he said. You earn it over years, by being exactly the person they all say you are.

Across more than two decades, Alison saw straight through to the heart of every young person she worked with. She took frightened children by the hand and made sure they felt safe, supported and ready to learn. There is no line in any job description for that, the Principal observed. She did it because that is what we do here, and because she, more than almost anyone, was the proof of it.

Alison has been the warm smile on the corridor on the darkest of mornings, the life and soul of every staff gathering, and a proud Classroom Assistant to a great many fortunate pupils. Mr Murray noted that her family, her mother May, her husband Gary, and her children Orla, Aisling, Michaela and Ciaran, will have more of her now, and that the school is so glad for them and so sorry for itself.

Addressing her directly, Mr Murray thanked Alison for lasting the course and for the difference she made, telling her that St Paul’s is a better school for having had her and a poorer place without her, and that there will always be a welcome for her.

Mrs Eileen Fearon, Chair of the Board of Governors, presented a gift to Alison on behalf of all staff.

Looking Ahead

Bringing the year to a close, Mr Murray offered his thanks to the staff choir and to all who organised the beautiful celebration of Mass, and to Fr Seamus White, PP, for leading the gathering in prayer and for being central, all year, to the school’s life as a Catholic community.

The Principal closed with gratitude to every member of staff for their kindness and for the difference they make in the lives of young people every day, and wished them a restful summer, with a reminder that this particular place is always worth coming back to.