Her aunt Mary MacSwiney, a legal guardian of hers, eventually came to collect her and took her back to Ireland.

[1][2] MacSwiney attended Scoil Íte and then St. Louis convent in Monaghan where, in 1936, she completed her Leaving Certificate and got a scholarship to University College Cork to study arts.

She spent some time teaching in Scoil Íte and then went to Dublin in 1942 to get a master's degree.

MacSwiney Brugha lead her Fianna Fáil cumann and volunteered with the aid agency Gorta.

With her husband as Official Opposition Spokesman on Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1977, the couple were very much involved in creating the policy of developing conciliation rather than aimed more at ending partition which they previously had been focused on.

[6][1][7] At the age of 85 and after her sight had failed she dictated her story to her daughter-in-law, Catherine Brugha.