[2] Tinney's parents were Irish migrants living in Scotland; her father Éamon was a tax official from Donegal and her mother Winifred (née Reid) a teacher from County Londonderry.
[2] In 1930, when Tinney was six years old, her family returned from Scotland to Carlingford, County Louth, where her father was killed in an accident, leaving his widow with four young children.
The family moved to Dublin, where Tinney's mother taught in a convent school and trained choirs.
From 1950 to 1963 she was posted to Stockholm, where she learned Swedish and danced an Irish jig before Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.
From 1 November 1956 to June 1960 Josephine McNeill had served as head of the Irish delegation in Bern, Switzerland, with the title of minister but did not hold ambassadorial rank.