1928 – 24 Dec 2019. Former headmaster St Patrick’s Classical Navan. President of the Association of Managers of Catholic Secondary Schools. He was a leading educationalist in the Diocese of Meath and was recorded in 1997 by the Irish Times at the AMCSS conference as “one of the most outstanding figures in modern Irish Catholic education as the long-standing former AMCSS and Joint Managerial Board president”.
He was awarded the papal Knighthood in recognition of his role as an “outstanding educationalist”. Wexford town native Liam Murphy first came to teach at the Navan school in 1948. His main subject at the time was Irish. When he was appointed principal there in November 1970, he was the first layman appointed head of a diocesan educational institution in the diocese. He succeeded Fr John Walsh, who had died as president of the school earlier that year, and was principal when the new school at Moatlands was opened by Bishop John McCormack, and the Minister for Education, Padraig Faulkner, in 1971.
Following his retirement from the Navan school, he was appointed in August 1989 by Bishop Michael Smith to take charge of a new diocesan education office for secondary schools in the Diocese of Meath, which saw him involved in decision making in many schools across the county. The back driveway into St Patrick’s CS, close to his Moatlands home, was named Liam Murphy Drive in his honour in recent years.
