Amy Huberman’s beloved father Harold (84) dies following battle with Parkinson's

She is being comforted by her loved ones in the wake of his devastating death, which happened last Friday.

Harold died in Our Lady's Hospice in Harold’s Cross and had been in the case of a nursing home for the last number of years following on from his diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease.

Former Ireland rugby captain Brian O’Driscoll confirmed the news on his Instagram last night with a short note that read: “RIP to my lovely father-in-law Harold.”

He accompanied the post with a picture of him smiling and sitting in a restaurant.

His funeral notice said that he died “peacefully” at the hospice, four days after marking his 84th birthday.

It said he was surrounded at the time by his beloved family including wife Sandra, daughter Amy and sons Mark and Paul. The notice adds that he will be “greatly missed” by his adored grandchildren Sadie, Billy and Ted and his brother Alf.

Underneath the notice are the words: “Night you lot! Bring me back a parrot!”

A former fashion designer who was born in London before moving to Dublin’s Foxrock in the 1960s, Mr Huberman was Jewish and will be laid to rest tomorrow morning following Kaddish at Massey Bros funeral home.

In lieu of flowers, his family have appealed for mourners to send donations instead to Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross.

Actor and writer Amy was very close to her father and spoke recently to Doireann Garrihy how she felt that his Parkinson’s diagnosis had “robbed” him of his time with her children.

“The one thing that has kind of affected me the most in the last few years is my dad’s illness and his ill health and again because he has been such a huge – like every parent – a huge part of my life and a real foundation of me as a person,” she told the ‘Laughs of Your Life’ podcast.

“He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s probably nine years ago at this stage and he’s had really bad health over the last two years, which has been really sh*t because of Covid.

“He is in full time care at the moment. I haven’t been able to see him a huge amount, but we can now but that’s been really hard.”

She said that although he was confined to a wheelchair as his physical health began to fail, he was still a “messer” and had a “gorgeous sense of humour.”

She took a very special trip with him to Auschwitz back in 2003 as she said her Jewish ancestry was “very important to me.”

“We did it with my dad and my cousins and my uncle and it was a pretty memorable trip and it was very special to do it together,” she said.

“It was so haunting and I’ll never forget it. We were standing outside the gas chambers and we had these little tea-lights and the Rabbi gave this amazing, heart-rendering speech about the history that was there.

"It was a Jewish trip essentially and my cousin organised it. I was raised Catholic - my mum’s Catholic and my dad’s Jewish - and I was speaking t o him afterwards and he said, ‘If you have Jewish blood in you, you are a survivor.’ and I had never really seen it in those terms.”