CONAN O’Donovan didn’t walk until he was four years old due to an undetected golf ball-sized cyst at the base of his skull that was impacting his balance.

But the 38-year-old Clonakilty native didn’t let that hold him back and he’s since run 11 marathons.

In his Leaving Cert year he suffered sudden and severe hearing loss; but again Conan hasn’t let it limit him, and he realised a long-held ambition this year when he became the mayor of his home town.

Sport is Conan’s passion and he’s a Gaelic Development Officer, training GAA in schools around Clonakilty. He also trains under-9 boys football and hurling in Clonakilty.

As a child it’s not something his parents could have easily imagined for their first born.

‘When I was a few months old my parents noticed that I could not sit up without being supported and I was not able to crawl properly either. As time went on I was not meeting my developmental targets and when I was two, I could only manage to stagger a few steps before hitting the ground. Up to that point everyone had been telling my parents that I ‘was almost there,’ but they realised early on that something was wrong,’ Conan said.

‘They took me to Cork almost every week for different therapies and physio. But after months of this and still no improvement in my balance my parents demanded that I should be seen by an expert so I was sent to Crumlin Hospital in Dublin where I’m told a brilliant doctor checked me out, realised something was wrong and sent me for a brain scan. Sure enough, there was a cyst the size of a golf ball right beside and touching my cerebellum. This was causing my balance to be poor and my coordination to be off.’

Despite not being able to walk until the age of four, Conan has gone on to have an accomplished track record as a runner, with no fewer than 11 marathons under his belt.

Surgery

Conan underwent surgery to insert a drain off to reduce the size of the cyst and take pressure off the cerebellum. Unfortunately though, the damage was done and his coordination and balance would always be affected. He remembers primary school as ‘tough.’

‘I got through it, I suppose playing a lot of sports helped me through the years,’ he reflects.

But there was another unforeseen obstacle for him to overcome: ‘A few months into my Leaving Cert year, I noticed a big drop in my hearing and over a short period of time I suffered severe loss and wore hearing aids in both ears for a few years.’

He remembers that time as frustrating, and it was something he tried to hide for a while. ‘But I was not going to let that stop me. With the support of the teachers, my parents, my two sisters and my friends, it became no big deal, just something I had to get on with it and stay positive.’

He worked locally after his exams and studied sports and fitness in a college of further education in Cork.

Implants

In his 20s, it was clear the hearing couldn’t be restored, and Conan opted for cochlear implants – that’s an electronic device that bypasses damaged parts of the inner ear to provide a sense of sound to individuals with severe to profound hearing loss.

‘Naturally I did a lot of research into it and for a second opinion, I went back to the neurologist who removed the cyst when I was four and told him the story about my life, he was mind boggled to hear that I was running marathons!’ said Conan.

He got the first cochlear implant in 2012 in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin and it was an initial success, although he suffered debilitating vertigo afterwards.

‘Unfortunately a few weeks later my ear got infected and started to swell up with lots of ringing in the ear, so I had to go back to hospital to have it removed.

‘ I was in hospital for a few months until the infection cleared,’ said Conan who was 25 at the time.

The second implant was smoother, but it didn’t work as well.

‘I try not to let it get in the way of life, but talking in big groups with my friends or going to the cinema without the subtitles on the screen is hard and so is going to gigs. It was also a problem during Covid with people wearing masks because I lip read so people need to be talking directly at me,’ he said.

His biggest obstacle though is his own fault: ‘That’s forgetting which batteries are charged, finding out my batteries are low and forgetting the spare ones at home.’

Unique

Clonakilty is unique in that it has a directly elected, voluntary, and non-political mayor, a tradition that started after the town’s council was abolished in 2014.

When the government abolished Clonakilty’s town council in 2014, (along with another 80 nationwide), the people of the town and wider community, led by a sub-committee of the local Dúchas Clonakilty Heritage group, organised a special election so that the people could directly elect five people to hold the position of Mayor of Clonakilty on a rotation basis over the following five years.

The town’s first mayor was businesswoman Colette Twomey and since then title holders have included many popular residents including the late Cionnaith Ó Suilleabháin.

Last June Clonakilty held its third mayoral election in 10 years, with 1,722 locals turning out to Scoil na mBuachaillí to vote and Conan was one of nine candidates on the ballot paper. Polls opened in the school at 10am on Saturday and closed at 7pm, and for over seven hours on Sunday, and across seven counts, some 30 volunteers managed the vote and count.

Interestingly,  just three ballot papers out of the total 1,722, were deemed invalid. The quota was 287. The first count saw Eileen Sheppard receiving 516 first preferences, and Conan on 317, with both deemed elected. Yousuf Janab Ali, James White, and Anthony McDermott were also elected.

Wonderful

Why did Conan go forward for the role in the first place?

‘It started off with my aunt saying it to my mother, and my mother saying it to me, and I said why not? I am well known in town and I love my town.

‘I also thought it would be good to push myself outside my comfort zone, to see how I would manage it, despite my setback, meeting different people from different backgrounds, managing my public speaking and one important thing, which building a bit of confidence in myself,’ he said.

Holding the title of Mayor means a lot to him.  ‘I’ve been living in Clon all my life, and it’s great to be Mayor of such a wonderful town. It means  people have put their faith in me when it comes to representing the town for special occasions etc.

‘I also think it’s a really good idea have a Mayor in town – for  visitors coming or welcoming people to festivals, opening art exhibition, anniversary events, that sort of thing. The Mayoral Council also host an awards night for local people who do something for charities or who have success in sport and other areas and it’s great to give
something back.’

First

Clonakilty is known for being a ‘first’ and thinking outside the box: it was the country’s first Fairtrade town, and the first Autism Friendly Town, and in the future Conan is interested in promoting awareness of hearing loss, using the platform he developed as Mayor.

With several months to go yet before he hands over the chains to Yousuf Janab Ali, he’s relishing the role but doesn’t have any further political ambitions.

‘I don’t think I’d have any interest in running for local government – this is as far as I’d go to be honest,’ he said.

And so far so good too

‘My advice to anyone in my situation is not to make a big deal out of hearing loss, there are lots of apps to help when out socialising, and to gain confidence. Take all the help you can get and do the best you can.

‘My hearing loss doesn’t hold me back, because I don’t allow it to.

‘To me it’s only one small thing about me, not the most important thing.’

Conan with his family.

The history of Clonakilty Town Council

CLONAKILTY Corporation was founded in 1613, and controlled by the Earls of Cork until 1738, then by their descendants, the Earls of Shannon. After the Act of Union (1800), it became a ‘closed corporation’, whose members, all Protestant from the Church of Ireland, were ‘co-opted’, and so unaccountable to the Catholic townspeople.

Throughout the 19th century, the corporation remained ‘unrepresentative, inefficient, corrupt, and provided few services,’ says historian Dr Matthew Potter. Jobbery was ‘rife’: from 1828-40, when the office of ‘Sovereign’ (mayor) of Clonakilty was held by John Leslie (a Cork banker and Lord Shannon’s land agent), half the corporation were either members of, or connected with, the Townsend family of Castletownshend.

In 1840, Clonakilty Corporation was replaced by Clonakilty Town Council. Led by a town clerk, this more representative body of 21 Catholic Town Commissioners – each owning property valued at £20 per annum plus, and elected by those owning houses worth at least £5 per annum – was more willing than ‘the jaded and inefficient Corporation’ to tackle problems, states Potter.  Meeting in the old market house on MacCurtain Hill, one of its first functions was to cope with the Famine. It also administered the weekly markets and collected tolls at five of the 12 annual fairs.

From 1869-76, its middle-class members were responsible for paving, cleaning and lighting streets with 40 oil lamps, constructing a reservoir and installing seven public water pumps. They also got involved in national politics, seeking to repeal the Act of Union in the 1840s, and supporting Home Rule and the Land League in the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1899, Clonakilty was made an Urban District Council, with the power to provide social housing.  Every three years, anyone who owned property – women as well as men – were eligible to elect members. It survived until the Local Government Reform Act (2014) abolished it as part of the nationwide dissolution of town councils.

Robert Hume

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.