Profile
To date tracks from Richard Mulligan’s second album Forgiveness have been played in close to forty countries, including Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Richard Mulligan's
road to forgiveness Frank Greally relates the journey of the well-known singer-songwriters and former elite athlete who never gave up in his quest to find his birth parents.
Singer-songwriter Richard Mulligan is looking forward to celebrating his 60th birthday on April 19th with his wife Margaret and family. ‘I'm feeling a little bit more grateful every day that passes for the life that I have been blessed to have lived to date,’ Richard said. ‘I had a rocky start, but a lot of the dreams I had as a boy have come true for me.’ Born in 1961 in the now infamous Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Richard could easily have gone through life feeling bitter and accusing, but the former national champion on road, track and cross-country instead chose the path of forgiveness to sustain him. Now well established as a singer/songwriter at home and internationally, Richard's second album is called Forgiveness and the title track is dedicated to his birth mother, who he didn't meet until he was in his early twenties. To date, tracks from this album have been played in close to forty countries, including Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Richard's first album with the title track I Never Met You was dedicated to the father he never met, but whose grave, through diligent research, he was able to find in a village in Connemara. The recent release of the Mother and Baby Homes report prompted a surge of many mixed emotions for Richard and he received a huge public response from his interview with Ray D'Arcy on RTE Radio 1 where he told of his own Mother and Baby Home experience. "I feel that that the State has in some ways addressed the whole sorry story, but the Church still has a lot of ground to make up for what happened,” Richard said. Richard, whose country roots run deep, tells a harrowing story of how his mother Mary, whose estranged husband was away in England, became 34 Senior Times l March - April 2021 l www.seniortimes.ie
pregnant during a relationship with a married man who lived close to her own family home in Bunowen on Connemara's Slyne Head. The end result of that brief relationship remained shrouded in mystery for years until Richard searched for and eventually found his birth mother. In the Ireland of 1961, the day before Richard was born, a group made up of the local priest, a Garda and doctor arrived at Richard's mother's house and forcibly took her to Sean Ross Abbey in the far-distant town of Roscrea in Tipperary. It was in that convent that Richard was born on April 19th, 1961, but his mother was allowed only a very brief time with with her newborn son and would not see him again until he was a full-grown man and a father himself. Because she would not sign papers to allow the nuns to have Richard adopted by a wealthy American couple who would pay the nuns for the privilege, Richard's mother was held against her will in the convent for a further four years, while her fourteen-year-old son Joseph was looked after by Mary's parents back in Connemara. "They tried to wear her down and have her sign the papers to send me off to America and I will always be grateful that my mother steadfastly refused to sign any of those forms. I think I inherited my stubborn streak from her." "I was only three years of age when I was handed over to John and Mary Mulligan, who were to become my foster parents and who later adopted and raised me in their the very loving environment of their farm in Carrintubber, Kilkerrin, County Galway," Richard said. "Although I was only three at the time, I still have memories of being carried out to the car by my foster parents and I remember how strange it felt to be driving away from the confines of the Abbey. Years later I learned that I was in very poor physical condition when my foster parents took me to their home. At three years of age I was still not able to walk properly." Richard's mother, Mary Flaherty, (her married name) was unaware of
