Dan Coakley was born on the last day of 1937 in Clonakilty, County Cork. In 1945 his family moved to Cork where he was educated at the Irish Christian Brothers’ famous school at Sullivan’s Quay. While there he attained first place in Ireland in the Primary to Secondary Schools scholarship. He subsequently won a Government Intermediate Scholarship, a Government University Scholarship to University College Galway and a Cork Corporation University Scholarship to University College Cork. He was elected to the Student’s Council at UCC and graduated as an Electrical Engineer in 1960.
He was an enthusiastic oarsman and was on the Cork Boat Club crew that won the IARU Maiden Championship of Ireland in 1957. He also rowed for Munster when it won the Irish Interprovincial Championship in 1957. He helped revitalise the defunct UCC Rowing Club in 1958/59. The club is still a power in Irish rowing.
Despite offers of a PhD research course in Plasma Physics, a job on the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia and a job building Tracking Stations on the Dew Line inside the Arctic Circle he opted for a management training course with the Irish Electricity Supply Board Dublin. He spent most of his professional life with this Company where he learned every facet of each voltage from 240 volts to 400,000 volts covering design, construction operation and maintenance.
In 1996 he transferred to ESBI Consulting Dublin where his first project was from the EC to instruct Ukrainian Engineers how to formulate requests to the International Funding Agencies for funds for their extremely run down networks. He next formulated a Network Plan for the Copper-belt of Zambia for the World Bank. In response to a call from the UN he managed the Electricity Sector of the Oil for Food Programme for Iraq and the Autonomous Area of Kurdistan. This was the biggest Aid Programme in UN history. During this project he separated from ESBI and worked directly with the UN. He subsequently worked in Serbia, Bosnia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, India and the Lebanon with frequent visits to the UN in New York.
When working in Iraq, Kurdistan, Serbia and Bosnia he frequently chaired meetings of engineers from areas at war with one another.
After the fall of Saddam he was asked to return to Iraq where he worked from the British Army Base in Basra and consulted on the restoration of the vital Electricity networks. These are feeding the oilfields and their refineries so strategic to the world economy but badly damaged as they lay in the path of the invading allied armies.