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Death of James Ryan, Doctor, Revolutionary & Fianna Fáil Politician

James Ryan, medical doctor, revolutionary and politician who serves in every Fianna Fáil government from 1932 to 1965, dies on his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, on September 25, 1970.

Ryan is born on the family farm at Tomcoole, near Taghmon, County Wexford, on December 6, 1892. The second-youngest of twelve children, he is educated at St. Peter’s College, Wexford, and Ring College, Waterford. In 1911, he wins a county council scholarship to University College Dublin (UCD) where he studies medicine.

In March 1917, Ryan passes his final medical examinations. That June he sets up medical practice in Wexford. In 1921, he moves to Dublin where he opens a doctor’s practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He leaves medicine in 1925, after he purchases Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. He lives there and it remains a working farm until his death.

In July 1919, Ryan marries Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, also fought in the Easter Rising and is subsequently an author of children’s stories in Irish. They have three children together.

One of Ryan’s sisters, Mary Kate, marries Seán T. O’Kelly, one of Ryan’s future cabinet colleagues and a future President of Ireland. Following her death O’Kelly marries her sister, Phyllis Ryan. Another of Ryan’s sisters, Josephine (‘Min’) Ryan, marries Richard Mulcahy, a future leader of Fine Gael. Another sister, Agnes, marries Denis McCullough, a Cumann na nGaedheal TD from 1924 to 1927. He is also the great-grandfather of Ireland and Leinster Rugby player James Ryan.

While studying at university in 1913, Ryan joins the Gaelic League at Clonmel. The company commander recruits the young Catholic nationalist, who becomes a founder-member of the Irish Volunteers and is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the following year. In 1916, he goes first to Cork to deliver a message from Seán Mac Diarmada to Tomás Mac Curtain that the Easter Rising is due to happen on Easter Sunday, then to Cork again in a 12-hour journey in a car to deliver Eoin MacNeill‘s cancellation order, which attempts to stop the rising. When he arrives back on Tuesday, he serves as the medical officer in the General Post Office (GPO) and treats many wounds, including James Connolly‘s shattered ankle, a wound which gradually turns gangrenous. He is, along with Connolly, one of the last people to leave the GPO when the evacuation takes place. Following the surrender of the garrison, he is deported to HM Prison Stafford in England and subsequently Frongoch internment camp. He is released in August 1916.

Ryan rejoins the Volunteers immediately after his release from prison, and in June 1917, he is elected Commandant of the Wexford Battalion. His political career begins the following year when he is elected as a Sinn Féin candidate for the constituency of South Wexford in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs, he refuses to attend the Westminster Parliament. Instead he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. As the Irish War of Independence goes on, he becomes Brigade Commandant of South Wexford and is also elected to Wexford County Council, serving as chairman on one occasion. In September 1919, he is arrested by the British and interned on Spike Island and later Bere Island. In February 1921, he is imprisoned at Kilworth Internment Camp, County Cork. He is later moved on Ballykinlar Barracks in County Down and released in August 1921.

In the 1922 Irish general election, Ryan and one of the other two anti-Treaty Wexford TDs lose their seats to pro-Treaty candidates. During the Irish Civil War, he is arrested and held in Mountjoy Prison before being transferred to Curragh Camp, where he embarks on a 36-day hunger strike. While interned he wins back his Dáil seat as an abstentionist at the 1923 Irish general election. He is released from prison in December 1923.

In 1926, Ryan is among the Sinn Féin TDs who follow leader Éamon de Valera out of the party to found Fianna Fáil. They enter the Dáil in 1927 and spend five years on the opposition benches.

Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil comes to office and Ryan is appointed Minister for Agriculture, a position he continuously holds for fifteen years. He faces severe criticism over the Anglo-Irish trade war with Britain as serious harm is done to the cattle trade, Ireland’s main export earner. The trade war ends in 1938 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement between both governments, after a series of talks in London between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, de Valera, Ryan and Seán Lemass.

In 1947, after spending fifteen years as Minister for Agriculture, Ryan is appointed to the newly created positions of Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to power at the 1951 Irish general election, he returns as Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Following the 1954 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil loses power and he moves to the backbenches once again.

Following the 1957 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil are back in office and de Valera’s cabinet has a new look to it. In a clear message that there will be a change to economic policy, Ryan, a close ally of Seán Lemass, is appointed Minister for Finance, replacing the conservative Seán MacEntee. The first sign of a new economic approach comes in 1958, when Ryan brings the First Programme for Economic Development to the cabinet table. This plan, the brainchild of T. K. Whitaker, recognises that Ireland will have to move away from self-sufficiency toward free trade. It also proposes that foreign firms should be given grants and tax breaks to set up in Ireland.

When Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, Ryan is re-appointed as Minister for Finance. Lemass wants to reward him for his loyalty by also naming him Tánaiste. However, the new leader feels obliged to appoint MacEntee, one of the party elders to the position. Ryan continues to implement the First Programme throughout the early 1960s, achieving a record growth rate of 4 percent by 1963. That year an even more ambitious Second Programme is introduced. However, it overreaches and has to be abandoned. In spite of this, the annual growth rate averages five percent, the highest achieved since independence.

Ryan does not stand in the 1965 Irish general election, after which he is nominated by the Taoiseach to Seanad Éireann, where he joins his son, Eoin Ryan Snr. At the 1969 dissolution he retires to his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, where he dies at age 77 on September 25, 1970. He is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. His grandson, Eoin Ryan Jnr, serves in the Oireachtas from 1989 to 2007 and later in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.


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Birth of John Magee, Bishop Emeritus of Cloyne

John Magee SPS, a Roman Catholic bishop emeritus in Ireland, is born in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore, on September 24, 1936. He is Bishop of Cloyne from 1987 to 2010. Following scandal he resigns from that position on March 24, 2010, becoming a bishop emeritus. He is the only person to have been private secretary to three popes.

Magee’s father is a dairy farmer. He is educated at St. Colman’s College in Newry and enters the St Patrick’s Missionary Society at Kiltegan, County Wicklow, in 1954. He also attends University College Cork (UCC) where he obtains a degree in philosophy before going to study theology in Rome, where he is ordained priest on March 17, 1962.

Magee serves as a missionary priest in Nigeria for almost six years before being appointed Procurator General of St. Patrick’s Society in Rome. In 1969, he is an official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome, when he is chosen by Pope Paul VI to be one of his private secretaries. On Pope Paul’s death he remains in service as a private secretary to his successor, Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II. He is the only man to hold the position of private secretary to three Popes in Vatican history. He also acts as chaplain to the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

Magee is appointed papal Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations in 1982, and is appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Cloyne on February 17, 1987. He is consecrated bishop on March 17, 1987, Saint Patrick’s Day, by Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

On April 28, 1981, Magee travels, without the knowledge or approval of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, to the Long Kesh Detention Centre outside Belfast to meet with Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker Bobby Sands. He seeks, unsuccessfully, to convince Sands to end his hunger strike. Sands dies the following week.

Magee plays a role in the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference where he is featured in the modernisation of the liturgy in Ireland. His pastoral approach places heavy emphasis on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood but, after some initial success, the number of vocations in the diocese of Cloyne declines, a trend reflected across the island of Ireland. He appoints Ireland’s first female “faith developer” and entrusts her with the task of transforming an Irish rural diocese into a cosmopolitan pastoral model using techniques borrowed from several urban dioceses in the United States.

Magee involves himself in a dispute with the Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral, a local conservationist group in Cobh which organises an effective and professional opposition to the Bishop’s plans to re-order the interior of the cathedral, plans similar to previous re-orderings in Killarney, Cork and Limerick cathedrals. In an oral hearing conducted by An Bord Pleanála, the Irish Planning Board, it emerges that irregularities have occurred in the planning application that are traced to Cobh Town Council, which accommodates the Bishop’s plans to modify the Victorian interior designed by E. W. Pugin and George Ashlin. On June 2, 2006, when Bishop Magee was in Lourdes, An Bord Pleanála directs Cobh Town Council to refuse the Bishop’s application.

On July 25, 2006, Magee publishes a pastoral letter stating: “As a result of An Bord Pleanála’s decision, the situation concerning the temporary plywood altar still remains unresolved and needs to be addressed. The Diocese will initiate discussions with the planning authorities in an attempt to find a solution, which would be acceptable from both the liturgical and heritage points of view.”

A diocesan official explains that the bishop does not wish to institute a judicial review in the Irish High Court because of the financial implications of such an action and because of the bishop’s desire to avoid a Church-State clash.

Claims that the decision of An Bord Pleanála infringes the constitutional property rights of religious bodies are dismissed when it is revealed that the cathedral is the property of a secular trust established in Irish law. It is estimated that Bishop Magee spent over €200,000 in his bid to re-order the cathedral. The controversy is reported even outside Ireland.

A February 2006 article by Kieron Wood in The Sunday Business Post claims that Magee does not have the backing of the Vatican in his proposals for St. Colman’s. At the oral hearing of An Bord Pleanála he is requested to provide a copy of the letter from the Vatican in which he claims he has been given approval for the modernising of the cathedral. The letter that he produces is a congratulatory message dated December 9, 2003 to the team of architects who worked on the cathedral project from Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The whole text of this letter is then reproduced in a publication called Conserving Cobh Cathedral: The Case Stated pp. 108–109.

At a meeting of his liturgical advisers and diocesan clergy in November 2006, Bishop Magee speaks of his conversation with the Pope in the course of that ad limina visit at the end of the previous month. He mentions that he has been closely questioned on several aspects of his proposals to re-order St. Colman’s Cathedral. It is obvious, he says, that the Pope has been kept well informed of the entire issue.

Bishop Magee’s contribution to the ad limina visit concerns not only his diocese of Cloyne but also ceremonial matters on behalf of the Conference. He also facilitates the broadcasting, in coincidence with the visit, of a life of Pope John Paul I prepared some months earlier by Italian state television (RAI). In an interview published on the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire on October 26, 2006, Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone criticises the image that the programme presents of Pope John Paul I.

After the ad limina visit, Bishop Magee represents the Irish bishops at a meeting in Rome of the International Commission for Eucharistic Congresses.

In 2007, for the third year in succession, Magee fails to complete his personal schedule of confirmations in Cloyne diocese. On May 12, 2007, he is admitted to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork to undergo a knee replacement operation. All official engagements are cancelled for the next ten weeks to allow him to recuperate, after which he resumes work.

In December 2008, Magee is at the centre of a controversy concerning his handling of child sexual abuse cases by clergy in the diocese of Cloyne. Calls for his resignation follow. On March 7, 2009, he announces that, at his request, the Pope has placed the running of the diocese in the hands of Dermot Clifford, metropolitan archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, to whose ecclesiastical province the diocese of Cloyne belongs. Magee remains Bishop of Cloyne, but withdraws from administration in order, he says, to dedicate his full-time to the matter of the inquiry. On March 24, 2010, the Holy See announces that Magee has formally resigned from his duties as Bishop of Cloyne. He is eventually succeeded by Canon William Crean whose appointment comes on November 25, 2012.

The subsequent report of the Irish government judicial inquiry, The Cloyne Report, published on July 13, 2011, finds that Bishop Magee’s second in command, Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan, then the parish priest of Mallow, had falsely told the Government and the HSE in a previous inquiry that the diocese was reporting all allegations of clerical child sexual abuse to the civil authorities.

The inquiry into Cloyne – the fourth examination of clerical abuse in the Church in Ireland – finds the greatest flaw in the diocese is repeated failure to report all complaints. It finds nine allegations out of 15 were not passed on to the Garda.

Speaking in August 2011, Magee says that he felt “horrified and ashamed” by abuse in his diocese. He says he accepts “full responsibility” for the findings. “I feel ashamed that this happened under my watch – it shouldn’t have and I truly apologise,” he says. “I did endeavour and I hoped that those guidelines that I issued in a booklet form to every person in the diocese were being implemented but I discovered they were not and that is my responsibility.”

Magee also offers to meet abuse victims and apologise “on bended knee.” He says he had been “truly horrified” when he read the full extent of the abuse in the report. However, a victim says apologies would “never go far enough.” “It’s too late for us now, the only thing it’s not too late for is that maybe there will be a future where people will be more enlightened, more aware and protect their children better,” she says. Asked about restitution for victims, Magee says it is a matter for the Cloyne Diocese.


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Birth of Áine Ceannt, Revolutionary Activist & Humanitarian Leader

Áine Ceannt (née Ní Bhraonáin), Irish revolutionary activist and humanitarian leader, is born Frances Mary Brennan at 28 Upper Camden Street, Dublin, on September 23, 1880.

Brennan is the daughter of Francis Brennan, who himself is a Fenian earlier in his life, and sister of Lily O’Brennan and Kathleen O’Brennan. Her mother is Elizabeth Anne Butler. She is educated in the Dominican College, Eccles Street, and adopts the name Áine upon joining the Gaelic League. It is through her Irish language activism that she meets her future husband, Éamonn Ceannt, whom she marries on June 7, 1905. Their son, Ronan, is born in June 1906. A convinced republican, she joins Cumann na mBan on its foundation in 1914. She writes and delivers dispatches during the Easter Rising. Her husband is one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and is executed by the British at Kilmainham Gaol on May 8, 1916.

Newly widowed, Ceannt continues her republican activism, serving as Vice-President of Cumann na mBan and as a member of the Sinn Féin Standing Committee. She also plays a role in the development of the Sinn Féin Courts, a parallel legal system designed to offer an alternative to the British courts.

Ceannt is ardently opposed to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. She is imprisoned by the Irish Free State government during the Irish Civil War in Mountjoy Prison for her anti-Treaty activity. Throughout the war, she serves at the highest levels within anti-Treaty Sinn Féin. In the years that follow, she spearheads efforts to secure state compensation for the widows and the children of those who had died in 1916 and in the Irish War of Independence. She serves as the head of the Children’s Fund of the Irish White Cross, an American-funded humanitarian organisation founded to assist victims of unrest in Ireland. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Red Cross.

In her later years, Ceannt moves to Churchtown, Dublin. She dies on February 2, 1954, in her home, Inis Ealgan, and was buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, situated in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.

(Pictured: Photograph, circa 1917, of Áine and Ronan Ceannt, the family of Éamonn Ceannt, who is executed for his participation in the 1916 Easter Rising)


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Death of Oliver St. John Gogarty, Poet, Author, Athlete & Politician

Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty, Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist, dies in New York City on September 22, 1957. He serves as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce‘s novel Ulysses.

Gogarty is born on August 17, 1878, in Rutland Square, Dublin. In 1887, his father dies of a burst appendix, and he is sent to Mungret College, a boarding school near Limerick. He is unhappy in his new school, and the following year he transfers to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England, which he likes little better, later referring to it as “a religious jail.” He returns to Ireland in 1896 and boards at Clongowes Wood College while studying for examinations with the Royal University of Ireland. In 1898, he switches to the medical school at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), having failed eight of his ten examinations at the Royal.

A serious interest in poetry and literature begins to manifest itself during his years at TCD. In 1900, he makes the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats and George Moore and begins to frequent Dublin literary circles. In 1904 and 1905 he publishes several short poems in the London publication The Venture and in John Eglinton‘s journal Dana. His name also appears in print as the renegade priest Fr. Oliver Gogarty in George Moore’s 1905 novel The Lake.

In 1905, Gogarty becomes one of the founding members of Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin, a non-violent political movement with a plan for Irish autonomy modeled after the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.

In July 1907, his first son, Oliver Duane Odysseus Gogarty, is born, and in autumn of that year he leaves for Vienna to finish the practical phase of his medical training. Returning to Dublin in 1908, he secures a post at Richmond Hospital, and shortly afterward purchases a house in Ely Place opposite George Moore. Three years later, he joins the staff of the Meath Hospital and remains there for the remainder of his medical career.

As a Sinn Féiner during the Irish War of Independence, Gogarty participates in a variety of anti-Black and Tan schemes, allowing his home to be used as a safe house and transporting disguised Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers in his car. Following the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he sides with the pro-Treaty government and is made a Free State Senator. He remains a senator until the abolition of the Seanad in 1936, during which time he identifies with none of the existing political parties and votes according to his own whims.

Gogarty maintains close friendships with many of the Dublin literati and continues to write poetry in the midst of his political and professional duties. He also tries his hand at playwriting, producing a slum drama in 1917 under the pseudonym “Alpha and Omega,” and two comedies in 1919 under the pseudonym “Gideon Ouseley,” all three of which are performed at the Abbey Theatre. He devotes less energy to his medical practice and more to his writing during the twenties and thirties.

With the onset of World War II, Gogarty attempts to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as a doctor. He is denied on grounds of age. He then departs in September 1939 for an extended lecture tour in the United States, leaving his wife to manage Renvyle House, which has since been rebuilt as a hotel. When his return to Ireland is delayed by the war, he applies for American citizenship and eventually decides to reside permanently in the United States. Though he regularly sends letters, funds, and care-packages to his family and returns home for occasional holiday visits, he never again lives in Ireland for any extended length of time.

Gogarty suffers from heart complaints during the last few years of his life, and in September 1957 he collapses in the street on his way to dinner. He dies on September 22, 1957. His body is flown home to Ireland and buried in Cartron Church, Moyard, near Renvyle, County Galway.

(Pictured: 1911 portrait of Oliver St. John Gogarty painted by Sir William Orpen, currently housed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland)


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The Siege of Cork

The siege of Cork begins on September 21, 1690, during the Williamite War in Ireland. It happens shortly after the Battle of the Boyne during James II’s attempt to retake the English throne from King William III. In a combined land and sea operation, the Williamite commander, John Churchill, takes the city and captures 5,000 Jacobites.

After the Battle of the Boyne, William occupies Dublin and the Jacobites retreat to the west of Ireland. William assaults and besieges Limerick in August 1690 but is repulsed. To secure the Jacobite-held ports of Cork and Kinsale on the southern coast, he dispatches a force under John Churchill, then 1st Earl of Marlborough.

Marlborough reaches Cork by sea on September 21, 1690. His English forces are 5,000 strong and he also has at his disposal a fleet which blockades the port of Cork. He captures several of the harbour’s defences, including Fort Camden, and lands troops at Passage West on September 24, before setting up his base at Red Abbey, to the south of the walled city. Approaching from the northern, landward side are 4,000 Danish troops under the Ferdinand Willem, Duke of Württemberg-Neuenstadt.

The Williamites take the forts, such as Elizabeth Fort, which command the hills around Cork and commences a bombardment of the city from the heights. When a breach is opened in the city walls, the city’s garrison opens surrender negotiations, asking to be allowed to leave Cork and join the main Jacobite army at Limerick. Marlborough refuses the request, although Württemberg is in favour of granting the terms.

A few days later, the Williamites mount a joint English-Danish assault of the breach from the south. Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, is reputedly mortally wounded while leading this assault. After the Williamites reach the walls, the Governor of Cork, Roger McElligott, opens new surrender talks and agrees that the garrison will become prisoners and will surrender their arms and stores. Marlborough accepts and the city surrenders.

In spite of this, the Williamite troops sack the city, do a great deal of damage, looting much property and abusing the Catholic inhabitants. Many civilians are killed before Württemberg and Marlborough restore order.

It remains for the Williamites to take nearby Kinsale, which is strongly defended by two forts, the Old Fort, also known as James’s Fort, and the New Fort or Charles Fort. Marlborough assaults these fortifications but is unable to take them by storm. The Old Fort, defended by the Governor Colonel Cornelius O’Driscoll, falls after an assault is made possible by an accidental explosion in its gunpowder magazine, which kills forty. After some 200 are slain in the following assault, including Colonel O’Driscoll, the rest surrender, receiving quarter. Charles Fort, however, holds out for ten days and surrenders only after receiving guarantees that its 1,200-strong garrison can march away to Limerick. It is defended by the elderly and experienced Governor Sir Edward Scott, and his Deputy Governor Colonel Donal IV O’Donovan.


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Birth of Irish Novelist Joseph O’Connor

Joseph Victor O’Connor, an Irish novelist, is born in Dublin on September 20, 1963. His 2002 historical novel Star of the Sea is an international number one bestseller. Before success as an author, he is a journalist with the Sunday Tribune newspaper and Esquire. He is a regular contributor to RTÉ and a member of the Irish artists’ association Aosdána.

O’Connor is the eldest of five children and brother of singer Sinéad O’Connor. He is from the Glenageary area of south Dublin. His parents are Sean O’Connor, a structural engineer who later turns barrister, and Marie O’Connor.

Educated at Blackrock College, O’Connor graduates from University College Dublin (UCD)with an MA in Anglo-Irish literature. He does post-graduate work at Oxford University and receives a second MA from Leeds Metropolitan University‘s Northern School of Film and Television in screenwriting. In the late 1980s, he works for the British Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. His second novel, Desperadoes (1993), draws on his experiences in revolutionary Nicaragua.

O’Connor’s novel Cowboys and Indians (1991) is on the shortlist for the Whitbread Book Award.

On February 10, 1985, O’Connor’s mother is killed in a car accident. The mother of his character Sweeney in The Salesman (1998) dies in the same manner.

In 2002, O’Connor writes the novel Star of the Sea, which The Economist lists as one of the top books of 2003. His 2010 novel Ghost Light is loosely based on the life of the actress Maire O’Neill, born Mary “Molly” Allgood, and her relationship with the Irish playwright John Millington Synge. It is published by Harvill Secker of London in 2010.

O’Connor is a Research Fellow at the New York Public Library and Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/Writer in Residence at Baruch College, the City University of New York.

In 2014, O’Connor is announced as the inaugural Frank McCourt Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, where he teaches on the MA in Creative Writing.

O’Connor is a regular contributor to Drivetime, an evening news and current affairs programme on RTÉ Radio 1.

O’Connor’s Shadowplay, published in 2019, is shortlisted for the2019 Costa Book Award in the Novel category.

O’Connor is married to television and film writer Anne-Marie Casey. They have two sons. He and his family have lived in London and Dublin, and occasionally reside in New York City.


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Birth of Ciarán Cannon, Former Fine Gael Politician

Ciarán Cannon, former Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Galway East constituency from 2011 to 2024, is born on September 19, 1965, in Galway, County Galway. He previously serves as a Senator for the Progressive Democrats and is the last elected leader of that party. He serves as a Minister of State from 2011 to 2014 and again from 2017 to 2020. He serves as a Senator from 2007 to 2011, after being nominated by the Taoiseach.

Before entering politics, Cannon is a planning official for Galway City Council and Dublin City Council, as well as CEO and secretary of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust. In 2002, he is honoured as one of the Galway People of the Year.

As a member of the Progressive Democrats, Cannon is elected to Galway County Council in the 2004 Irish local elections, to represent the Loughrea local electoral area, with 1,307 first preferences. He is an unsuccessful candidate at the 2007 Irish general election in Galway East. He is nominated by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to the 23rd Seanad in 2007.

Cannon is elected as Leader of the Progressive Democrats in April 2008. He is the first leader of the party to sit as a Senator while serving as leader. At his first press conference as party leader, he states that he believes “there was passion, commitment, talent and knowledge within the PDs’ ranks to stage a big comeback.”

However, after speculation increases that Noel Grealish, one of the two Progressive Democrat TDs, intends to leave the party, Cannon announces in September 2008 that a party conference will be held on November 8, 2008, at which he will recommend that the party disband. The delegates present at the conference vote 201–161 to agree with this recommendation.

On March 24, 2009, Cannon announces his decision to resign the leadership of the Progressive Democrats and joins Fine Gael the same day. At the 2011 Irish general election, he is one of two Fine Gael TDs elected in Galway East.

On March 10, 2011, Cannon is appointed by the coalition government led by Enda Kenny as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills with responsibility for Training and Skills. He is dropped as a minister in a reshuffle on July 15, 2014. At the 2016 Irish general election, he is elected to the third seat in Galway East.

On June 20, 2017, Cannon is appointed by the minority government led by Leo Varadkar as Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with responsibility for the Diaspora and International Development. He calls for a “No” vote in the 2018 referendum to allow legislation on abortion.

In 2019, in recognition of his work in education, Cannon is appointed as a UNICEF global champion for education. He is one of seven Generation Unlimited Champions who advocates worldwide for the development of UNICEF’s Gen U programme.

At the 2020 Irish general election, Cannon is elected to the second seat in Galway East. He continues to serve as a minister of state until the formation of a new government on June 27, 2020.

On March 19, 2024, Cannon announces that he will not contest the next general election, blaming a “toxicity in politics.”

Cannon is a musician and songwriter, and recently collaborated with Irish folk singer Seán Keane and others on songwriting projects. One of his co-compositions, “Nature’s Little Symphony,” is performed in Dublin by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of the national Cruinniú celebrations on Easter Monday 2017. Both “Nature’s Little Symphony” and another of his compositions, “Gratitude,” are featured on the album Gratitude recorded by Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2018. On the August 10, 2018, Cannon plays piano with Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of a sold-out performance at the National Concert Hall. In 2019, he composes “An Túr,” a short piano instrumental to celebrate the birthday of W. B. Yeats.

In 2021 Cannon is commissioned to compose the soundtrack to a poem by Emily Cullen as part of the national commemoration of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.

In March 2024, Cannon begins presenting The Grey Lake Cafe, a radio show on Loughrea Community Radio featuring his own musical choices, and interviews with public figures who have a passion for music.

Cannon is also an avid cyclist and cycling safety advocate. He specialises in endurance cycling challenges and on June 19, 2021, he cycles Ireland end to end, a distance of 575 km, in 23 hours and 23 minutes, to raise money for charity.

On July 2, 2021, Cannon is involved in a road traffic collision and suffers serious injuries. On July 2, 2022 he marks the first anniversary of the incident by cycling 500 km around the border of County Galway. Marking the same date in 2023, he cycles 935 km (581 mi) in 56 hours, covering all 32 counties of the island of Ireland while fundraising for Hand In Hand, a charity that supports families challenged by childhood cancer.


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Birth of Kathleen Behan, Irish Republican & Folk Singer

Kathleen Behan (née Kearney), Irish republican and folk singer, and mother of Irish authors Brendan, Brian and Dominic, is born on September 18, 1889, at 49 Capel Street, Dublin.

She is the fifth child and youngest daughter of pork butcher and grocer, John Kearney (1854–97), and his wife Kathleen Kearney (née McGuinness) (1860–1907). She has four brothers and two sisters. Her father is from Rosybrook, County Louth and her mother is from Rathmaiden, Slane, County Meath, both coming from prosperous farming families. Her father has a business on Lower Dorset Street, with a grocery, pub and a row of houses. Owing to his own poor management, by the time she is born he has a smaller business on Dolphin’s Barn Lane. Following his death in 1897, she and her sisters are placed in the Goldenbridge orphanage at Inchicore by their mother. She is there from 1898 to 1904 where she becomes an avid reader. When she leaves, she rejoins her family in a one-room tenement flat on Gloucester Street.

Her oldest sibling, Peadar Kearney, is an ardent republican who writes the lyrics to the song that becomes the Irish national anthem, ”Amhrán na bhFiann”(English: “The Soldier’s Song”). It is through him that she meets a printer’s compositor and member of the Irish Volunteers, Jack Furlong. They marry in 1916. She is an active member of Cumann na mBan, and serves as a courier to the General Post Office, Dublin and other outposts during the 1916 Easter Rising. At the same time, Furlong fights in the Jacob’s factory garrison. The couple has two sons: Roger Casement (Rory) Furlong (1917–87) and Sean Furlong (born March 1919). Sean is born six month’s after she is widowed when Furlong dies in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. She lives with her mother-in-law, who is also a republican and seamstress who makes Irish Volunteer uniforms. She is arrested for running an Irish Republican Army (IRA) safe house. She works for a short time for Maud Gonne as a housekeeper, where she meets W. B. Yeats and Sarah Purser. A study painted of her by Purser (above) is now in the National Gallery of Ireland entitled The Sad Girl. From 1918 to 1922 she works as a clerk in the Dublin Corporation, while also a caretaker in the Harcourt Street branch of the Irish White Cross republican aid association.

In 1922 she marries Stephen Behan, house painter, trade unionist and fellow republican. The couple has four sons and one daughter: Brendan (b. 1923), Seamus (b. 1925), Brian (b. 1926), Dominic (b. 1928), and Carmel (b. 1932). Brendan is born while his father is imprisoned during the Irish Civil War, and Behan claims that Michael Collins gives her money while she is pregnant. Stephen’s mother owns three slum tenements, so the Behans live rent-free in a one-room basement flat at 14 Russell Street. Owing to her disdain at gossiping on the house steps, she is nicknamed “Lady Behan” by her neighbours. When Stephen’s mother dies in 1936, the Behans moved to a newly built council house in Crumlin, living at 70 Kildare Road. The family finds the new house far from work and school, and the local area devoid of community.

The family experiences extreme poverty frequently, owing to Stephen’s unemployment and during the nine month long building strike of 1936. Behan attempts to claim a pension as her first husband had served in 1916, but her application is rejected. She had said the exposure to flour had effected Furlong’s lungs negatively. It is declined as she had remarried before the enactment of the Army Pensions Act 1923. Despite their circumstances, the house attracts conversation, music, books and politics. The Behan’s republican, socialist, labour activist and anti-clericalism have a strong effect on their sons, particularly Brendan and Dominic. Such is the volume of radical meetings that take place at the Behan home, it is dubbed “the Kremlin” by their neighbours, and a “madhouse” by Stephen. During The Emergency of 1939 to 1945 she fights against local shopkeepers who ignore price controls, and is labelled as “red” for her anti-Franco and pro-Stalin sympathies. Her reply to the branding of her as such is “I’m not red, I’m scarlet.”

From the 1950s onwards, Behan shares international fame with her sons Dominic and Brendan. She often travels to London to see their plays, eventually appearing on British and Irish television and cultivating her own following. She is badly injured when she is struck by a motorcycle, a day before Stephen’s death in 1967. Owing to the effect of these injuries, she moves in 1970 to the Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Sybil Hill, Raheny.

In 1981, she records an album When All the World Was Young. Taped conversations of her reminiscences are made into an autobiographic book, Mother of all the Behans, by her son Brian in 1984. A one-woman stage adaptation of the book by Peter Sheridan and starring Rosaleen Linehan is acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and North America.

Behan dies in the nursing home in Raheny on April 26, 1984, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

(Pictured: Portrait of Kathleen Behan by Sarah Purser, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Mairead Corrigan & Betty Williams Awarded Nobel Prize for Peace

Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, the founders of Women for Peace, which later becomes the Community of Peace People, are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on September 17, 1976, “for the courageous efforts in founding a movement to put an end to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland.”

In August 1976, three innocent children are killed in a shooting incident in Belfast. Betty Williams, a housewife and secretary, witnesses the tragedy. She decides to launch an appeal against the meaningless use of violence in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. She is joined by the dead children’s aunt, Mairead Corrigan, a Northern Irish secretary, and together they found the peace organization the Community of Peace People.

Williams has a Protestant father and Catholic mother, a family background from which she derives religious tolerance and a breadth of vision that motivates her to work for peace. Early in the 1970s she joins an anti-violence campaign headed by a Protestant priest, before she throws herself with full force into grass-root activities for the Peace People. By setting up local peace groups comprised of former opponents who undertake confidence-building measures, they hope to set a peace process in motion from below.

The Northern Irish peace movement disintegrates in the course of 1978. This is due both to internal disagreements and to the spreading of malicious rumors by Catholic and Protestant extremists.

After Corrigan’s sister loses three children in the shooting incident in Belfast, she is promptly contacted by Williams, and they agree to found a peace organization to bring an end to the bitter conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Corrigan grows up in a poor family in Belfast. In addition to her office job, she devotes a great deal of time in her youth to charity work in the Catholic organization Legion of Mary. That gives her a good basis on which to develop the nonviolent strategy of the Community of Peace People, which brings together thousands of people in protest marches and confidence-building measures among the grass roots in 1976 and 1977.

Corrigan does not give up hope even when the Peace People lose nearly all their support in the late 1970s. She keeps up her local peace work with admirable strength.

Maguire continues her involvement in the organization to this day and serves as the group’s honorary president. The organization has since taken on a more global agenda, addressing an array of social and political issues from around the world.

Williams resigns from the Peace People in 1980. She dies in Belfast on March 17, 2020, Saint Patrick’s Day, at the age of 76.


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Birth of Patrick Francis Moran, Third Archbishop of Sydney

Patrick Francis Moran, a prelate of the Catholic Church, the first cardinal appointed from Australia and the third Archbishop of Sydney, is born at Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, on September 16, 1830. Before his promotion to Archbishop, his scholarly research into the lives and times of the Irish Catholic Martyrs leads to the publication of many primary sources for the first time. These publications have since been used in recent beatifications and at least one canonization.

Moran’s parents are Patrick and Alicia Cullen Moran. Of his three sisters, two become nuns, one of whom dies nursing cholera patients. His parents die by the time he is 11 years old. In 1842, at the age of twelve, he leaves Ireland in the company of his uncle, Paul Cullen, rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. There he studies for the priesthood, first at the minor seminary and then at the major seminary.

Moran is considered so intellectually bright that he gains his doctorate by acclamation. By The age of 25 he speaks ten languages, ancient and modern. He focuses on finding and editing important documents and manuscripts related to Irish ecclesiastical history. Some editions of his works remain important source materials to this day.

Moran is appointed vice-rector at the Pontifical Irish College and also takes the chair of Hebrew at Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (CEP). He is also some-time vice-rector of the Scots College in Rome. In 1866, he is appointed secretary to his mother’s half-brother, Cardinal Paul Cullen of Dublin. He is also appointed professor of scripture at Holy Cross College, Dublin. He founds the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (on which he later models the Australasian Catholic Record).

In 1869, Moran accompanies Cardinal Cullen to the First Vatican Council, a council also attended by Melbourne‘s then-first archbishop, James Alipius Goold. According to Michael Daniel, it is generally agreed that the definition of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility is based on Cullen’s proposal, and Ayres suggests that there is strong evidence that Cullen’s proposal is largely drafted by Moran. While in Rome and Ireland he is very active politically in opposing English Benedictine plans for monastic foundations undergirding the Catholic Church in Australia.

Moran is appointed coadjutor bishop of Ossory on December 22, 1871, and is consecrated on March 5, 1872 in Dublin by his uncle, Cardinal Paul Cullen. On the death of Bishop Edward Walsh, he succeeds as Bishop of Ossory on August 11, 1872. He champions Home Rule and is consulted by William Ewart Gladstone prior to the introduction of his Home Rule Bills.

Moran is personally chosen and promoted by Pope Leo XIII to head the Archdiocese of Sydney – a clear policy departure from the previous English Benedictine incumbents, John Bede Polding and Roger Vaughan, who were experiencing tension leading the predominantly Irish Australian Catholics. In the archbishop’s farewell audience with Leo XIII, it is evident that the intrigues of parties, the interference of government agencies and the influence of high ecclesiastics had made the matter almost impossible to decide by Propaganda. In the presence of others, the Pope says clearly: “We took the selection into our own hands. You are our personal appointment.” Moran is appointed to Australia on January 25, 1884, and arrives on September 8, 1884. He is created cardinal-priest on July 27, 1885, with the title of St. Susanna. The new Irish Australian cardinal makes it his business to make his presence and leadership felt.

Moran begins transforming the Sydney Saint Patrick’s Day festivities by inaugurating the celebration of a Solemn Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Saint Patrick’s Day 1885. Over time the day’s events change from an Irish nationalist and political day into an occasion “for the demonstration of Irish Catholic power and respectable assimilation” as well as “for the affirmation of Irish Catholic solidarity.”

In 1886, it is estimated that Moran travels 2,500 miles over land and sea, visiting all the dioceses of New Zealand. In 1887, he travels 6,000 miles to consecrate fellow Irishman Matthew Gibney at Perth. He also travels to Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Hobart, Goulburn, Lismore, Melbourne and Rockhampton for the consecration of their cathedrals. Following the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, he supports the right of labourers to better their conditions.

During his episcopate, Moran consecrates 14 bishops (he is the principal consecrator of William Walsh, Michael Verdon, Patrick Vincent Dwyer, Armand Olier and also assists in consecrating Patrick Clune, among others). He ordains nearly 500 priests, dedicates more than 5,000 churches and professes more than 500 nuns. He makes five journeys to Rome on church business between 1885 and 1903, but does not participate in the papal conclave of 1903 because of the relatively short notice and the distance, making it impossible for him to reach Rome within 10 days of the death of Pope Leo.

Moran is a strong supporter of Federation, and in November 1896 attends the People’s Federal Convention in Bathurst. In March 1897, he stands as a candidate election of ten delegates from New South Wales to the Australasian Federal Convention. Although he states he will not attend the Convention in any official capacity, but in a solely individual one, his candidacy sparks a sectarian reaction. Twenty-nine per cent of voters give one of their ten votes to Moran, but he comes only thirteenth in number of total votes and is not elected.

From 1900 to 1901, Moran’s leadership survives a crisis when his personal secretary, Denis O’Haran, is named as co-respondent in the divorce case of the cricketer Arthur Coningham. Moran vigorously defends O’Haran and a jury finds in his favour.

Moran dies in Manly, Sydney, on August 16, 1911, aged 80. A quarter of a million people, the largest crowd ever to gather in Australia prior to that date, witness his funeral procession through the centre of Sydney. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.