By Paddy Walsh

JUST over a century since the young Kathleen Rita McNulty left her native Creeslough with her family for a new and, as it turned out, remarkable life in the United States, her grand-daughter stood in front of the facility at Letterkenny ATU that bears her grandmother’s name.

Behind her on the window, writ large in letters as she is in history, The Kay McNulty Data Centre, and for Naomi Most, a sense of pride and emotion as she addressed the guests at last week’s official opening of the computer hub.

Among those in attendance, the computer heads who helped make it happen and the group of delegates from all over the world who were present at the ATU for a special Cloud Computing Standards conference including Canadian born, Brendan McManus, son of former Lower Main Street resident, George.

He too left for a new life across the Atlantic but while his genre was music, Kay McNulty majored in computer science and mathematics.

Naomi Most lived with her family for four years before going to live with her grandmother, she revealed.

‘With an extended family, the home got too full for me and I went to live with her when I was a teenager.

“And I got to know her very well and one of the vivid memories I have is of her weighing out these gigantic pieces of paper for programming.”

She realised her grandmother was remarkable but not remarkable in another way.

Her achievements in computer science and mathematics in various capacities were outstanding. “She was able to do all these things in a window of time which the world was forced to consider people they didn’t normally consider.”

The men were away fighting in the wars and who was left to do the calculating? And so Kay McNulty befriended five other women and they worked together as the original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general purpose electronic digital computers.

“She had a lot of grit and determination,” Naomi summed up her grandmother.

In her address to the ribbon cutting ceremony, the C.E.O. of INEX, Eileen Gallagher spoke of her own roots in Mayo, pointing out that her father had been born in 1922, over a year after Kay McNulty’s birth in Donegal.

He had missed so much school – her father’s education impaired because of the need to survive.

Kay McNulty’s family had emigrated to the United States when she was just three years of age. “It was phenomenal what she achieved in her lifetime.”

“We are fortunate in Ireland now to have a brilliant educational system.” The country was the wealthy beneficiary from inward immigration with people coming from all corners of the world.

Kay McNulty had created phenomenal opportunities as an emigrant – the greatest gift the Data Centre named after her could do was to enable people to learn and achieve its full potential in Donegal.

“I would ask that you continue to invest here and continue to demand more,” Ms Gallagher implored.

MC for the occasion, Danny McFadden, who worked alongside Ruth Lennon and John O’Law along with the heads of department and heads of school in helping to develop the Data Centre, said: “We have a proud tradition in honouring Kay in this College, in this campus.

“There’s definitely a Hollywood movie about Kay McNulty. Her story is spectacular – the fact that she is local to us, comes from where our students come from.

“And the fact that she came back and visited us on campus is very meaningful to us.”

He voiced the hope that she would inspire women to continue involvement in computers.

Also addressing the gathering, Head of College, Paul Hannigan recalled Kay McNulty’s visit to the then R.T.C. around 20 years previously.

“It was a fantastic event for the College. All her relations in Creeslough came to the event plus hundreds of students.”

It was, he indicated, important to mark her contribution and to remember her in a positive way.

Important, too, he said to get more females into computer science. “Just provide the space and see it happening.”

John Andy Bonar, Head of College, welcomed the guests who were attending the Cloud Computing Standards Conference.

“I have the pleasure of working every day among the cleverest people in the region,” he said, with part of his job being to try and find the support to achieve their vision.

He paid a “huge acknowledgement” to Ruth Lennon for leading out so well on the working group and also referred to the significant role of Thomas Dowling, Head of School of Computing,

Mr Bonar recalled 25 years previously when the North-West suffered “catastrophic job losses” after Fruit of the Loom shut its six operations between Donegal and Derry with 3,000 people losing their jobs.

“It was quite remarkable in some ways and when the books are written it could be the first time ever that Irish people didn’t solve the problem by emigrating.”

Previously they would have jumped on a bus, ship and train and would have been welcomed in far flung countries and making contributions to their society, he said.

But at the College in Letterkenny they built the Foundation Programme to enable people to gain the skills necessary in technology.

“We have a unique facility in Ireland and an increasing opportunity for students to learn the inner workings of computers and data centres.”

Mr McFadden echoed the tribute to their line supervisor, Mr Dowling: “None of this would have happened without his approval, assistance, willingness to support and foresight to know that this is the direction that we need to invest our time and skills in.”

He also acknowledged Ruth Lennon also without whom it would not have happened.

Also from the Department of Computing, John O’Raw recalled an era when Ireland was a poor country and opportunities for education didn’t exist.

Then in 1973 the Government of the day had built “these really ugly buildings” in nine locations throughout the country, calling them Regional Technical Colleges.

“The notion was let’s take the next generation of young people and instead of them being labourers on building sites, let’s make them technicians.”

Ireland now had the highest proportion of graduates certainly in Europe and also, he thought, the world. And it had all happened over one generation.

The really ugly blocks of buildings pushed out generations of technicians that fed the development of Irish industry and helped to bring in foreign investment, he maintained.

Before the cutting of the ribbon by Naomi and Eileen and prior to the guests cramming their way into the Date Centre for a quick tour, Danny McFadden referred to his own educational background when he had left the R.T.C. with an Honours Degree and worked in industry in various parts of the world.

“The fact that I chose to come back here and take up a role as a lecturer, for me that speaks volumes about the management, the staff and the facility.”

He hoped with the Data Centre that the students would leave more empowered and more knowledgeable.

“We absolutely want to promote women in engineering, women in computing as well,” he insisted.

Speaking afterwards, Ruth Lennon remembered Katy McNulty’s visit to the then. R.T.C. “There was a long queue of people waiting to meet her and she sat and spoke to every single person who was there.

“When you walked away after meeting her, there was no way you were going to do anything but computing. That was the kind of influence she had.”

A remarkable role model – who went to the United States at a very young age speaking nothing but Irish and ended up celebrated internationally in the world of computer programming.

And her name honoured and inscribed on the window of the Data Centre in the third level institution 25 kilometres from where she was born.