THE grandson of an Irish woman who provided the vital weather forecast for the D-Day landings said her family will ‘be high-fiving each other in the cinema’ when her name is mentioned in a major new feature film about the event.Pressure, which debuts in Irish and British cinemas on September 9, tells the story of how weather forecasting informed when Allied forces would invade Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War.The film stars Irish actors Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon but there is no on-screen depiction of Maureen Flavin Sweeney, the young woman whose weather readings from Blacksod Bay in Co. Mayo gave the Allies their cue to land. Pressure, which debuts in Irish and British cinemas on September 9, stars Irish actors Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon The film tells the story of how weather forecasting informed when Allied forces would invade Nazi-occupied France during the Second World WarHer grandson insists the family are not disappointed that the director chose not to dramatise her role, instead only mentioning her by name.But he told the Irish Mail on Sunday he is writing a book about the Blacksod lighthouse that will feature her story in detail. And the details of her pivotal role are extraordinary.It was midnight on her 21st birthday when Maureen noticed the mercury in her Post Office barometer take a sharp drop, signalling an impending summer storm.A young recruit to the Blacksod Bay post office, which also acted as a weather station, she dutifully recorded the information. The date was June 3, 1944.Early the next day, Maureen received the first of three official phone calls from the UK Meteorological Office in Dunstable, 30 miles north of London. A woman with an upper-class English accent repeatedly asked the young weather clerk to ‘please check, please repeat’ her readings. By the time the third phone call came through, Maureen had convinced herself she had messed up the data and asked Ted Sweeney – son of the post mistress and the lighthouse keeper at Blacksod – to confirm the readings, which he duly did.It was not until 12 years later that the pair, who were by now married, discovered that, based on their information, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had decided that D-Day or the Normandy Landings – the largest seaborne invasion in history – would not happen as planned on June 5.This week, her grandson, Fergus Sweeney, a TV cameraman who still lives at Blacksod Bay, said his grandmother had ‘a great story to tell’ and he hoped to tell it more fully in future.He told the MoS: ‘Maureen Flavin was just a 21-year-old girl working at a weather station in Blacksod and she didn’t realise that her readings and observations would feed into one of history’s biggest decisions, which was “When do we invade Europe, what day and what time?” ‘So it’s phenomenal that you have this butterfly effect. Like when a butterfly flaps its wings in Ireland and a tree falls in the Amazon. It was like that.‘I think she has a great story to tell and I think the three phone calls she received would have been great depicted on the big screen. It was very cinematic.‘But I think in this version of the story, the director has his focus, and that’s on [UK meteorologist] Captain James Scott and the pressures he was facing in providing the whole weather picture to the Allies. So I’m not really disappointed that there are no scenes involving my grandmother. ‘In many ways, it’s in keeping with what happened in 1944. You know, all the action was over in the UK and Maureen was kind of quiet in the background, minding her own business… and I kind of like that.’But he added: ‘Still, I would love to see her story told in a bit more depth in the future. I’m working on a book on the history of lighthouses of our district and Maureen’s story will be key to that.’Pressure also stars Brendan Fraser, the Oscar-winning star of The Whale. Maureen Flavin’s grandson Fergus – pictured with his father Gerry, Maureen’s son – wants to see her story told in more depth in the futureThe film follows General Eisenhower (Fraser) and his Scottish meteorological adviser, Group Captain James Stagg (Scott), in the tense 72 hours before the Normandy landings.The Blacksod station had originally provided weather observations every six hours. But with the outbreak of the Second World War, the British requested Ireland to provide readings every hour, day and night.That meant a small team was needed to keep the station operating continuously. Among them was Maureen, originally from Kerry, who had answered a national newspaper ad for the Blacksod job.Mr Sweeney said his grandmother remembered well the three phone calls coming through in June 1944. ‘That was the one thing that stood out in her mind. On the day of June 4, she got those three phone calls from the UK,’ he recalled. ‘The weather team needed to be sure because they were going to advise General Eisenhower that they thought they had a surprise window for the invasion. That’s why they rang Blacksod three times on the morning of June 4.‘What’s interesting is that, prior to that, Maureen’s readings would have gone to Dublin, where they would have been sent across the Irish Sea in almost a secret code.‘But on the morning of June 4, obviously someone in the UK made the decision to just contact the weather station directly.’Although Ireland was neutral in the Second World War, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera had agreed to provide weather readings to the UK.Mr Sweeney explains: ‘We actually have an archived letter from the Colonial Office in Downing Street on behalf of the Air Council of Great Britain. The office is writing to the Irish Government saying, “We really need observations from Blacksod.” ‘You can see straight away that the British authorities recognise the importance of Blacksod in meteorological terms.‘And the Irish – we didn’t have any meteorologists; there was no Met Éireann – we needed the UK forecasts too. So there was a secrecy around the whole agreement, with the Irish Government at the time not wanting its civilian population to know that we needed British help with anything.‘People often ask us on our tours, “Why Blacksod?” And I guess it is because we’re jutting out in the Atlantic. Weather stations in Valentia would have probably given similar readings, but they would have been much later. We always get the first belt of the weather.’By way of acknowledgement of his grandmother’s contribution, the film’s producers have invited the Flavin Sweeney family to a special preview screening in Ballina next week. Maureen died only in 2023, aged 100, and two of her sons, Gerry and Vincent, continue to run the Blacksod Bay lighthouse, which still takes weather readings.Fergus also runs a museum at the lighthouse, which attracts hundreds of visitors each year.He says his grandmother would have been very pleased to be mentioned in the film: ‘She was always kind of proud of it, very proud of the fact that she helped,’ he said.Maureen married Ted in 1946 and became Maureen Sweeney. She later became postmistress after her mother-in-law died. Maureen Flavin married Ted in 1946 and became Maureen SweeneyThe weather station subsequently moved from the post office to the lighthouse when the Government sold the building in which the post office was housed. It remained there until 1956, when Met Éireann established a purpose-built weather station closer to Belmullet.As equipment was being removed from Blacksod, a Met Éireann official accompanied the team. His reason for making the journey was not simply technical. He also wanted to thank Maureen and her husband for their wartime work – and to tell them just how important their observations had been.The couple had spent years recording the weather without fully appreciating the role their information had played in the events of June 1944. In 2020, Maureen received a medal from the US House of Representatives in recognition of her contribution to world history. HOW THE IRISH BATTLED IN WORLD WAR ll… ON SCREEN THE appearance of Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon in the new biopic Pressure is just the latest outing for Irish actors in blockbuster dramas about the Second World War. Dunkirk Christopher Nolan’s 2017 film about the British rescue of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers surrounded by Germans on a beach in France during World War II starred Cillian Murphy, above, and Barry Keoghan in lead roles.Masters Of The Air Irish actor Anthony Boyle stars as Harry Crosby, below, a navigator and the narrator of the true story of 10 young men from the US Air Force flying B-17s on bombing raids on Nazi Germany. Incidentally, Dubliner Barry Keoghan played pilot Lt Curtis Biddick, left, in the 2024 Apple TV series. Inglourious Basterds Michael Fassbender’s breakthrough role came in Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 WWII fantasy, which sees a band of Nazi hunters go behind enemy lines to try to assassinate Hitler. Fassbender plays Lt Archie Hicox, above, an undercover British officer sent into occupied France to rendezvous with the Nazi hunters.Blitz In 2024, Saoirse Ronan, above, starred in acclaimed director’s Steve McQueen’s film, Blitz, telling the story of a young mother searching for her son who had been evacuated from London during the Nazi bombings.Saving Private Ryan Curracloe Beach in Co. Wexford memorably featured as a Normandy beach in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 Second World War epic, Saving Private Ryan, right. Incidentally, the film also featured a glimpse of a young Andrew Scott, then starting out on his film career, who appeared as an extra.