She claims she is a housewife at heart but one of the hazards of her working week is dealing with the threat of pirates taking over her vessels in the Indian Ocean.
Helping the less fortunate is all in a day's work for Arklow woman Mary O'Neill who has recently taken a position with the UN as port captain for its World Food Programme in Africa.
Having lost her husband Michael to illness in 2006 Mary has made a big change in her life swapping South Wicklow for Tanzania and all the risks that come with it.
This, however is not Mary's first time to be involved with aid work and in the last decade, she has also been in charge of aid reaching some of the world's most disadvantaged people in Eritrea and Iraq and victims of the tsunami in Indonesia.
A mother of three, (whose three children are now in university), Mary told the media this week that security is a big issue when crews take to the water and that pirates are a constant problem of which they must always be aware.
While family members at home understandably worry about Mary's safety while she is on the job she says she makes a point of calling her parents in Arklow regularly to let them know how she is doing.
Having worked with the UN in Rome handling aid shipments for more than two years, Mary moved back home to Arklow in 2004 when her husband's health worsened.
Previous to this she worked in the port of Massawa for six months ensuring that food supplies reached people in Ethiopia who were caught up in the conflict there.
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