Joan Moore, former content editor of Drugnet Ireland, died in January.  Joan had been one of the longest serving members of HRB staff and had spent most of the last 10 years working with the drug and alcohol research team.  We greatly admired Joan’s erudition and intellectual gifts and her skilful management of much of the HRB’s published output and we know from her family that she brought the same enthusiasm and enjoyment of work to the practical tasks in her home.  So, it is poignant that she never got to use her retirement present, a workbench on which she had planned to hone her carpentry skills with the same diligence as she used to keep abreast of developments in editing and scientific communication. 

Joan loved language and writing and was drawn to the silly and absurd and great story telling of every kind from The loved one and Scoop, an obvious favourite for an editor, to the wonderful Yon lion’s et our Albert.  We lost her technical gifts when she retired but it is her wit and wisdom that we now remember most.  She was genuinely interested in and concerned with the minutiae of her workmates’ lives and willingly shared the joys and concerns of her own beloved family.  To them, Paul her husband, Tim her son and our good friend Katie, her daughter, we express our deepest sympathies.