Vincent Beirne grew up at 5 Plunkett Avenue in Boyle. He is the eldest of six children. He left the town at 19, lost a property at 21, and spent years finding his way through the world before his father died suddenly and changed the direction of everything.

He came back to Boyle to sit down with Carlo and Florence, and the conversation that followed was one of the most searching and personal episodes the Voices of Boyle has recorded.

The Man Who Was His Rock

When Vincent talks about his father, the word he reaches for is rock. A man who protected the family quietly and absolutely, who kept a second set of gates on the house in Plunkett Avenue, who let his children experience things and then gently but firmly pulled the halter back. Who told Vincent, when he caught him smoking, that if God had wanted him to smoke he would have put a chimney in his head.

“He was the only person that loved me unconditional and had no hidden agenda,” Vincent said.

When his father died of a massive heart attack, Vincent was there. He spent 50 minutes trying to resuscitate him. He was not successful.

“When I lost my father, I fully realised he was the only person that loved me unconditional. And I evaluated life after that. Everything shifted.”

Growing Up on Plunkett Avenue

Before all of that, there was Boyle. Plunkett Avenue, the famine graveyard nearby where he played as a child without understanding its significance, the marbles, the freedom of moving in and out of neighbours’ houses without knocking. He remembers the town at a time when it had a social life and a sense of community that he feels has been slowly eroded.

He was the eldest of six. That responsibility, he says, was instilled deeply. You were not assigned to fail. His father modelled that clearly: when things went wrong, and there were struggles in the family, he always kept smiling, always kept things even, never let the weight of it show to the children.

Losing a Property at 21 and Getting Back Up

At 19, when the family moved from Boyle to Loughrea in Co. Galway, his father invested in a derelict house above the village for Vincent to renovate. He did the work. At 21, another man cleared the property through adverse possession and Vincent lost it. All the work went with it.

“Everyone thought at the time it would be the absolute ruination of me,” he said. “But I was up the next day.”

It was his first clear lesson that the system was not designed to make things easy for people trying to move forward. It would not be his last.

“For me to be who I am today, I had to do serious work within myself. It is a matter of cutting energetic ties. It is a matter of gathering elements of your soul.”

The Shamanic Path

After his father’s death, Vincent found his way to a woman in a village in the west of Ireland. He went sceptically and came away with things she had told him that no one else could have known. That encounter started a process. He went on to train at Elder Jordan’s Shamanic School in Casla, Co. Galway, working through weekend sessions over a period of months and continuing to do the work between each one.

He is careful about the language he uses. He does not call himself a shaman. A genuine shaman, he explains, is born of two shamans. He calls himself a trained shamanic practitioner and he means it as a precise distinction, not a modest one.

He does not charge for his work. He has worked with people carrying addiction, trauma, relationship pain and what he describes as soul loss: the sense of incompleteness that comes when parts of the self are left behind after significant experiences. His explanation of it is direct: it is a watering can with holes in it. You can keep filling it but unless you find and close the holes, it will always empty again.

Soul Loss and What He Has Seen

On a shamanic journey, Vincent describes travelling through the tree of life into what he calls the lower world, guided by spirit animals and ancestors, to find the parts of a person that have been left behind at specific moments of trauma or loss.

He has worked with a man who spent years and significant money on escorts, not out of desire but out of a hunger for closeness he had never received from his mother. When the root was found and understood, the behaviour stopped. He has worked with a man on a 22-year alcohol relapse, meeting him once a week, going at a pace that respected the reality of where the man was, until seven months of sobriety became possible. He has worked with women in their forties who had spent their lives on career and material success and found themselves wondering what it had all been for.

In each case, the work is to go back, find what was lost, and return it.

“It is like a watering can with holes in it. You keep trying to fill it and it keeps emptying. Unless you gather the elements that are gone, you can never fill that.”

Seven Poster Volunteers and 253 First Preferences

Vincent stood as an independent candidate in the Galway West constituency in a general election. He knew he was not going to win. That was not the point.

Seven people put up posters for him. He got 253 first preference votes. He counts those 260 people as the entire value of the exercise: 260 people he had reached and perhaps shifted slightly in their thinking, people who might now see things a little differently.

“To be honest with you, if you can see someone a bit happier than they were the day before, money can’t buy that.”

The Vision for Boyle

When Carlo reached out to Vincent about coming on the podcast, Vincent was already in conversation about a building in Boyle. He took the timing as confirmation of something.

His vision is a rambling house: a space in a building with history, where people can come to express themselves, hear forgotten stories, and find the kind of community that used to be built into the daily life of a place like Boyle. He wants to hold events there, facilitate conversation, give people a place to arrive at when they are carrying something they do not know how to put down.

“A building where people found happiness. A building where people found love. A building where people found laughs. That has been disregarded in time. I want it back.”

He connects this directly to what he sees as the loss of the rambling house tradition in Irish rural life: the open door, the neighbour who walked in without knocking, the fire around which things were said and heard and processed without anyone calling it therapy.

“Always look within. The true message is there.”

The Billboard

At the end of the conversation, Carlo asks Vincent what he would put on a billboard on the Crescent in Boyle if he had one for a month. He does not hesitate.

Always look within. The true message is there.

Key Timestamps

00:00 — Welcome from Carlo

00:09 — Arriving back in Boyle, Carlo’s mother and the connection to his father

00:38 — His father: his rock, unconditional love, no hidden agenda

01:18 — Spending 50 minutes resuscitating his father, the turning point

01:37 — Life like a car logbook: your details are all there

01:55 — Moving from Boyle to Loughrea at 19, his father investing in a house for him

02:15 — Losing the property at 21 through adverse possession, up the next day

02:53 — The eldest of six, assigned not to fail, watching his father deal with struggle

03:19 — Growing up in Boyle, the stigma attached to certain areas of town

04:11 — 5 Plunkett Avenue: the second set of gates, playing marbles, the famine graveyard

05:29 — What the famine has left in the Irish DNA

07:32 — His daughter Leticia and starting her in karate at a young age

07:55 — First black belt on the way to second

08:01 — The shamanic path: starting to do his own inner work

08:34 — For me to be who I am today, I had to do serious work within myself

09:05 — Soul loss: parts of the soul lost in time through trauma

09:38 — Going on an ancestral journey, meeting angry ancestors who felt disrespected

10:25 — Meeting his father and grandfather on a lower world journey

11:04 — Finding a wrong done 15 generations ago that had carried down the line

11:43 — What a shamanic practitioner does and the distinction from a genuine shaman

12:30 — His son, born of two shamanic practitioners, a genuine shaman

13:15 — Working with a man spending over 600 pound a week on escorts, finding the root cause

14:36 — How he got into the shamanic path, the woman in the village

15:08 — The first encounter: she told him things no one else would know

16:11 — A friend whose wife had an affair, Jason, the kidney donation and the cocaine addiction

19:25 — Finding Jason in Dublin, talking him down, the text that saved his life

20:00 — Jason’s death from antifreeze, refusing to shake the wife’s hand at the funeral

20:30 — Ending up at Elder Jordan’s Shamanic School in Casla, Co. Galway

21:16 — Not charging for the work, the difference between genuine and ego-driven practitioners

22:01 — The man on a 22-year alcohol relapse, now seven months sober

23:00 — What a shamanic journey involves: sacred space, the drum, the lower world

24:13 — The tree of life, the gateway, lower world and akashic records

24:35 — Finding a woman’s childhood trauma on the journey

26:25 — Is it like a regression? The shamanic drum as the mother’s heartbeat

27:08 — Why he does not use psychedelic substances in his work

30:37 — Soul loss explained: the watering can with holes in it

35:02 — Growing up, the temptation of drink and drugs, watching a friend collapse from a joint

36:24 — The Vulcan Cork episode in Carrick-on-Shannon

37:30 — His father’s line on smoking: if God wanted a chimney he’d have put one in your head

40:50 — Standing as an independent in the Galway West general election

41:00 — Getting 253 first preferences and seven poster volunteers

55:17 — The true reward: leaving someone a bit happier than the day before

58:00 — The fire as a symbolic gathering place, the heart of the home

01:00:49 — Netflix top 10: a crackling fire on screen, what has the world come to

01:03:51 — His vision for Boyle: a rambling house, a building with history

01:11:32 — Teacher Ghost Gannon standing out from his Boyle childhood

01:11:32 — The billboard question: always look within

01:15:21 — Why reaching out to Carlo around the same time as the Boyle talks was not a coincidence

01:16:49 — How to get in touch: Facebook as Vincent Beirne, TikTok as Spirit of Freedom

Guest Bio

Vincent Beirne grew up at 5 Plunkett Avenue in Boyle, the eldest of six children. He now lives in the west of Ireland with his partner Susan and their son. After losing his father to a sudden heart attack and following a period of significant personal reflection, he trained as a shamanic practitioner at Elder Jordan’s Shamanic School in Casla, Co. Galway. He works with individuals on addiction, trauma, soul loss and ancestral healing, and does not charge for his sessions. He stood as an independent candidate in the Galway West constituency in a general election. He has a vision for bringing a rambling house space back to Boyle.