1 2 April 2016
W
hen paper tycoon Michael Smurfit told
his wife Norma he was dumping her for
a tall Swede and wanted a divorce, in a
restaurant in 1985, “she threw a glass of
wine over me and left”. Apart from that
all she ever does is good.
Michael Smurfit told the Irish Times a few years ago:
“Norma was very feet on the ground. She was working-
class people in London. She has very, very sound
values and still has. She wasn’t interested at all in mate-
rial things to any great extent”. Michael ruefully if
despicably claimed “I was very lucky with my first wife
[Norma] and probably a bit unlucky with my second
[leggy Birgitta]”. Norma's self-
declared weakness is East
Enders, though somewhat
redeemingly she detests golf.
After she left school, Norma
worked as a hairdresser for
seven years on Regent Street.
She later told the Examiner: “It
sounds much more glamorous
than it was. It was all pin curls
and tight curly perms back then,
and we were on 19 and 6 pence
a week”. Later, she claimed:
“I first got involved with char-
ity work when I put together a group of women, mainly
made up of Smurfit company wives, to buy mini-buses
for the blind and Central Remedial Clinic. We called our-
selves ‘The Helpers’ and began by raising money
through coffee mornings and jumble sales, before we
moved on to more ambitious events”.
Norma went on to found First Step, registered at the
hideous Smurfit office in Donnybrook, a not-for-profit
to help start-up young businesses, especially by loans,
but it was in effect superseded by State-owned Micro-
finance Ireland on whose board Norma Smurfit now
serves. She is also on the board of Gaisce, the Presi-
dent’s award and the Denis O’Brien-chaired National
College of Ireland. Norma Smurfit, who lives in Mount
Merrion, also set up the Irish Youth Foundation and the
Irish Arthritis Foundation.
The striking bronze sculptures titled 'Famine' (1997)
were commissioned by Norma Smurfit, presented to the
City of Dublin and installed on Custom House Quay in
1997. Subscribers of £750 are named in the quayfront
stones below the piece.
Sculptor Rowan Gillespie said that he felt his memo-
rial would not be complete until "the figures are
crossing a sea of names, names cast in bronze and set
into the cobble surround, thousands of names, names
of those who have pledged to care".
Norma Smurfit is now proposing a €2m pavilion for
the west side of Merrion Square in Dublin . In 2014, con-
servation architects Howley Hayes and Associates drew
up a conservation and management plan for Merrion
Square premised in the idea that it is always best to
improve something charming and fragile.
The park was overgrown, with more tunnel-like paths
than it used to have, they noted. The vegetation, they
declared, needed to be thinned out, and the old path
network reinstated. They did not consider that an oasis
from the traffic was a better amenity for people who use
Smur fit-up for
Merrion Square
Do-gooder again seeks to do
good but doesn’t
by Michael Smith
NEWS
'Famine' (1997) was
commissioned by Norma
Smurfit, and installed
on Custom House Quay
in 1997. Subscribers are
named in the quayfront
stones below
Rutland Gate