Walburga, known as Burga, Monaghan, was born on November 30th, 1918, the same month the armistice was signed, ending the first World War. She is older than the State and, according to the Gerontology website, is now Ireland’s second oldest person after Mary Halley from Co Tipperary, who was born on February 9th of the same year. There is no definitive list of Ireland’s oldest people. When The Irish Times published a story about Eileen Nell Hynes, who died at the age of 109 in June, we were contacted by Monaghan’s son Michael, who said his mother should be in consideration for the position of Ireland’s oldest person. It is not only his mother’s longevity that is remarkable, but her general health, her son said. She rarely gets ill, takes no medication and her mind is sharp enough to continue The Irish Times Simplex crossword, something she has been doing for as long as she can remember. Fanny Phillipe Argue, a French volunteer with Alone, a charity that works with the elderly, brings her the paper every week. Alone volunteer Fanny Phillipe Argue comes once a week to do the Simplex crossword with Walburga Monaghan “Keeping your mind satisfied is very important. I get great satisfaction out of the crossword,” Monaghan said. She attributes her longevity to a hardy upbringing. “We were well fed. My mother and father had plain food, and we were well reared,” she said. “There’s hard work, keeping working and doing things and help people if you can. That’s my system. I never thought of living this long. I just went from one birthday to the next.” Monaghan was born Walburga Fullam in Sallins, Co Kildare, as one of eight children. She is named after a 9th century Anglo-Saxon saint. There is clearly longevity in her genes. Her surviving sister, Maura Murray, will be 100 in November. She remembers the Eucharistic Congress in 1932, the same year she went to a boarding school run by the Presentation Nuns in Mountmellick, Co Laois. She once got 105 per cent in an algebra exam (the additional 5 per cent came from doing the exam in Irish). “I got the reputation for being able to teach maths,” she said. She then went on to switch careers from teaching to train as a chemist, and she and her brother later opened a pharmacy. She moved to Dublin in 1940 to work as a pharmacist and qualified in 1942.During the war, she moved to England. “I got a bomb dropping near where I was living in Essex,” she said. “I got frightened, and they decided to send me home.” She met her husband Bartholomew, and he got a job as an engineer in Galway. They settled in Oughterard, and their three children were born in Galway: Michael, John and Mary. In 1957 Bart, a civil engineer and farmer, saw an advertisement for the sale of Loughlinstown House in Co Meath. They fell in love with the property and its 200 acres of land, and have lived there since. Bart died in 1995 at the age of 78. He was a heavy smoker. Walburga says she never drank and no longer smokes. There was plenty of work for her on the farm, she said, and she also worked part-time as a pharmacist in Our Lady’s Hospital Navan until her retirement. Her children are still alive, along with her 13 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. “I never thought I’d live to this age. What has me here, and what has me that I can talk to you, because most people can’t once they reach 80 years of age?”