{"id":498878,"date":"2026-06-14T07:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T07:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/498878\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T07:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T07:14:17","slug":"from-the-hse-to-church-of-ireland-dean-i-took-a-huge-salary-cut-but-ive-never-been-happier-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/498878\/","title":{"rendered":"From the HSE to Church of Ireland dean: \u2018I took a huge salary cut, but I\u2019ve never been happier\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since May 31st, the overwhelming question in Church of Ireland<\/a> circles has been \u201cwho is Canon Tom O\u2019Brien?\u201d <\/p>\n

That Sunday it was announced that Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson had appointed O\u2019Brien to succeed Rev Dermot Dunne, who retires as dean of Christ Church Cathedral at the end of August. <\/p>\n

At 54, O\u2019Brien worked at the Health Service Executive<\/a> (HSE) for almost three decades and has served just three years as a Church of Ireland rector. It is not the usual track record for someone in one of the most senior clerical positions in Dublin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was the archbishop thinking in making the appointment?\u201d is, usually, the second question in such conversations. <\/p>\n

Looking closely at O\u2019Brien\u2019s history, the answer is soon as implicit as that in comedian Caroline Aherne\u2019s question to magician\u2019s wife Debbie McGee: \u201cWhat first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?\u201d<\/p>\n

Christ Church is in Dublin\u2019s south inner city. Among O\u2019Brien\u2019s roles at the HSE was as co-ordinator for the Dublin northeast drugs taskforce in the early 2000s, when the area was beset by drug abuse. He went on to become the HSE\u2019s addiction services manager for the Dublin north city and county area when it had probably the highest prevalence of drug abuse in the country.<\/p>\n

Leading about 400 staff and six drug taskforces, O\u2019Brien \u201cjust loved working with drug addicts and trying to make lives better\u201d, he told The Irish Times. \u201cIt was investing in communities, investing in supports, building up new programmes.\u201d <\/p>\n

He studied for a master\u2019s degree in social work at Trinity College Dublin and the St Francis Hospice in Raheny, specialising in palliative care. \u201cIt was very positive. I know that sounds weird, but people knew they were at the end of life … they were content with where they were at, and there was a great sense of calm and a great sense of peace, and I actually thought there\u2019s lots I can learn from this.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"CanonCanon Tom O’Brien will be installed as dean of Christ Church in October. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

His thesis was \u201con grief and loss in addiction. We often think about loss being the physical loss of an individual but then, what we realised with addiction, was that there is a loss when a parent loses their child to addiction. They\u2019re not going to be, you know, a schoolteacher, they\u2019re not going to get married; perhaps they\u2019re not going to have wonderful grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n

And \u201cyou realise there were other forms of grief that we\u2019re recognising now with Alzheimer\u2019s and dementia, that the person is there but they\u2019re not, so you\u2019re not allowed to grieve because society doesn\u2019t understand it and they say \u2018what are you doing, your Daddy is still there\u2019. But he\u2019s not, so [there are] all these other types of grief that we learned about.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien \u201cjust loved\u201d carrying out the research. <\/p>\n

In order to rise further in the HSE \u201cyou needed to get more experience elsewhere\u201d so he took on the job as co-ordinator of BowelScreen, a screening service for bowel cancers. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t patient-facing, so I started to think \u2018oh this is not for me\u2019.\u201d He applied for and was appointed the HSE\u2019s youth mental health taskforce co-ordinator, which saw him leading development of the national mental health strategy. <\/p>\n

It meant structures were in place when Covid hit to provide counselling in emergency departments, in the home, \u201cand for young people in particular who were sitting the Leaving Cert and were panicked about being isolated\u201d. It was \u201cbrilliant and it was one of the most successful things that I have done in my career\u201d. <\/p>\n

He was then asked \u201cto do a policy on loneliness, which was the biggest problem for older people. But I had enough policy at that stage.\u201d Instead he headed primary care for the Dublin north city area, covering \u201cevery service in the community\u201d.<\/p>\n

After Covid, he felt things fell back into the old ways at the HSE, and for some the bureaucracy became \u201cstifling\u201d. As he ascended the ranks, it was a case of being \u201cat meetings every day, thinking about other meetings\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Church of Ireland feels financial strain as empty rectories hit by Vacant Homes TaxOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

By then O\u2019Brien \u201cwas speaking with the archbishop and I had been a self-supporting minister for 10 years\u201d, having undertaken training for ministry at the Church of Ireland Theological College in Dublin while working at the HSE. He served as curate in Howth and Balbriggan parishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to the archbishop, you know I love what I\u2019m doing at the HSE but I just feel as though, should I wait until I\u2019m 65 and then come into a church and be too old to do anything, or I\u2019m open to exploring coming into the church and doing something dynamic before I retire and see how it works out.\u201d <\/p>\n

Besides, by then he had realised that \u201csitting at meetings would have just killed me\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was also an incident when his son Dylan was very ill in hospital. O\u2019Brien was about to visit him when he was asked to attend another such HSE meeting. \u201cWe\u2019d love you to be here, Tom, because there\u2019s something urgent we need to discuss,\u201d he was told. He attended the meeting but there was \u201cnothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

The archbishop knew of a vacancy that would suit O\u2019Brien. He was interviewed for the position as rector at St James\u2019s in Crinken, south Dublin, and three years ago got the job. \u201cI took a huge salary decrease, huge, but I\u2019ve never been happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

He loves it at Crinken \u2013 his biggest difficulty with accepting the job as dean of Christ Church \u201cwas the people\u201d at Crinken. He had been to \u201cvery many churches where select vestries have been kind of difficult at times,\u201d but in a very active three years at Crinken \u201cI\u2019ve had nothing but an easy ride\u201d.<\/p>\n

The people have been \u201cvery supportive, no matter what I wanted, they said \u2018yes, let\u2019s do it\u2019\u201d and he and his wife Daniella have \u201cmade very good friends. It\u2019s a beautiful location.\u201d Now he was headed for \u201cthe city centre into what is a very formal role\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I\u2019ve got friends and connections in this country that I never believed I would have had\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The archbishop has been \u201cvery supportive. He is very wise. He sees an awful lot of things that I don\u2019t even see, you know. He sees talents that I probably didn\u2019t see about myself. He knew that Crinken would be a great fit. I don\u2019t know how he knew that, but it was. He knows the cathedral\u2019s going to be a good fit for a different reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien and his wife Daniella have three children, Rebecca (27), Dylan (24) and Tara Rose (20). He and Daniella met in London during an earlier life when both were, briefly, studying law. She is from Prague and her father is a senior figure in the Czech Republic\u2019s Baptist Union. <\/p>\n

From Waterford and a Catholic background, O\u2019Brien had by then already found his way to the Baptists as his faith search went on. It continued, until he found his spiritual home in Anglicanism. <\/p>\n

It is expected he will be installed as dean of Christ Church in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since May 31st, the overwhelming question in Church of Ireland circles has been \u201cwho is Canon Tom O\u2019Brien?\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5784,615,2120,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-498878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-church-of-ireland","tag-dublin","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}