LAST UPDATE | 18 Oct 2023
JOE DRENNAN, THE journalism student who was struck by a car and killed on Friday night, has been remembered as a hardworking, confident young man who “spent his time building people up” at his funeral.
The ceremony, which took place in St Fergal’s Church in Camross, Co Laois, this afternoon, heard from people in Joe’s short but full life.
The 21-year-old, who was nominated for Journalist of the Year at this year’s Student Media Awards, was struck and killed in a hit-and-run incident while he waited for a bus at the weekend.
Joe was Editor of University of Limerick student newspaper Limerick Voice, where he went to college.
Dr Kathryn Hayes, director of the BA in Journalism and Digital Communication course in UL, knew Joe as a student.
She read out a eulogy written by his aunt on behalf of the family.
“If there’s one central element to Joe’s story, it’s love,” she read.
“Joe was loved and adored by so many and in turn he showed and gave so much love.”
Dr Hayes spoke of when he came out to his parents at just 15 years of age.
“Joe had wonderful friends who accepted him for who he was – just Joe,” she said.
“Maeve was his best friend all his life and over these past days she has relayed so many lovely stories that have made us laugh.”
Dr Hayes told stories of Joe as a child, and his entrepreneurial ventures in secondary school, where he opened his own tuck shop “that was so successful that he had to acquire a second locker just for his stock”.
“Joe was a very hard worker and he showed real drive and ambition.”
He was going to be a star.
“He never said no to any opportunity that presented itself.”
“Rural life, and especially farming, just wasn’t for our Joe,” Dr Hayes said, to laughs from attendees.
However, while Joe was living in Limerick for college, he’d often go home “especially for his nanny’s dinner”.
“After his first year [at college] it was like he was two feet taller,” Dr Hayes said.
It was through his journalistic work that Joe became “a voice for those who needed it”.
“He was so confident and sure of himself that he’d spend his time building people up.”
His life was cut short – but it was a life.
“He had wonderful friends, a family who adored him and he knew real love. Not everybody gets that.”
Dr Hayes said that, although Joe only turned 21 two weeks ago, he was already a great journalist.
“He was really committed to these principles that underpin best journalistic practice,” she said.
“Joe wanted to change the world and his desire for change can be seen in the work he was already doing with Gay Community News.”
An obituary published on the magazine’s website on Monday said there were “no words to describe the cold shock each of us received when we got the news.”
“You’d never think he was only 21,” they wrote. “To be that talented, switched on and professional at that age is rare. He was confident and focused and completely reliable. He was also incredibly sweet, funny, gracious, and so, so cool.”
You could say his voice being silenced is a loss to the writing community, the queer community, his hometown, but none of those would say enough. It is the world’s loss.
Joe was on his way home after finishing a shift in a local restaurant on Friday, when a car which had just been involved in a collision with another vehicle beforehand struck the student.
Gardaí said the driver of the vehicle “failed to remain at the scene”, while the driver of the other vehicle, a man in his 40s and an adult female passenger, were taken to University Hospital Limerick with non-life threatening injuries.
Gardaí are continuing to search for the driver of the car, and a spokesperson confirmed to The Journal yesterday evening that no arrests had been made.
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