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The Murder of Robert McCartney

The murder of Robert McCartney occurs in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the night of January 30, 2005, and is carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

McCartney, born in 1971, is a Roman Catholic and lives in the predominantly nationalist Short Strand area of east Belfast, and is said by his family to be a supporter of Sinn Féin. He is the father of two children and is engaged to be married in June 2005 to his longtime girlfriend, Bridgeen Hagans.

McCartney is involved in an altercation in Magennis’ Bar on May Street in Belfast’s city centre on the night of January 30, 2005. He is found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and dies at the hospital the following morning. He is 33 years old.

The fight arises when McCartney is accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to the wife of an IRA member in the social club. When his friend, Brendan Devine, refuses to accept this or apologise, a brawl begins. McCartney, who is attempting to defend Devine, is attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed. Devine also suffers a knife attack, but survives. The throats of both men are cut and McCartney’s wounds include the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine is hospitalised under armed protection.

When Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers arrive at the scene, their efforts to investigate the pub and surrounding area are met with an impromptu riot. Rioting by youths, specifically attacking the police, force them to pull back from the area, which delays initial investigation. Police with riot gear arrive later in the evening and are also attacked. Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin claims, “It appears the PSNI is using last night’s tragic stabbing incident as an excuse to disrupt life within this community, and the scale and approach of their operation is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.” There are suggestions that the rioting is organised by those involved in the murder, so that a cleanup operation can take place in and around where the murder took place. Clothes worn by McCartney’s attackers are burned, CCTV tapes are removed from the bar and destroyed and bar staff are threatened. No ambulance is called. McCartney and Devine are noticed by a police car on routine patrol, who call an ambulance to the scene.

When the police launch the murder investigation they are met with a “wall of silence” None of the estimated seventy or so witnesses to the altercation come forward with information. In conversations with family members, seventy-one potential witnesses claim to have been in the pub’s toilets at the time of the attacks. As the toilet measures just four feet by three feet, this leads to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Sinn Féin suspends twelve members of the party and the IRA expels three members some weeks later.

Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, urges witnesses to come forward to “the family, a solicitor, or any other authoritative or reputable person or body”. He continues, “I want to make it absolutely clear that no one involved acted as a republican or on behalf of republicans.” He suspends twelve members of Sinn Féin. He stops short of asking witnesses to contact the police directly. The usefulness of making witness statements to the victim’s family or to a solicitor is derided by the McCartneys and by a prominent lawyer and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, Alban Maginness, soon afterward.

On February 16, 2005, the IRA issues a statement denying involvement in the murder and calls on the perpetrators to “take responsibility.”

On March 8, 2005, the IRA issues an unprecedented statement saying that four people are directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knows their identity, that two are IRA volunteers, and that the IRA has made an offer to McCartney’s family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.

In May 2005, Sinn Féin loses its council seat in the Pottinger area, which covers the Short Strand, with the McCartney family attributing the loss to events surrounding the murder.

Since this time, the sisters of McCartney have maintained an increasingly public campaign for justice, which sees Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness make a public statement that the sisters should be careful that they are not being manipulated for political ends.

The McCartney family travels to the United States during the 2005 Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations where they are met by U.S. Senators (including Hillary Clinton and John McCain) and U.S. President George W. Bush who express support in their campaign for justice.

Support for Sinn Féin by some American politicians is diminished. Adams is not invited to the White House in 2005 and Senator Edward Kennedy backs out of a meeting that had been previously scheduled. The McCartney family, previously Sinn Féin supporters, pledge to never support the party again, and a cousin of the sisters who raised funds for Sinn Féin in the United States insist that she will not be doing so in the future.

On May 5, 2005, Terence Davison and James McCormick are remanded in custody, charged with murdering McCartney and attempting to murder Devine respectively. McCormick is originally from England. They are held in the republican wing of HM Prison Maghaberry. Roughly four months later the accused are released on bail, and in June 2006, the attempted murder charge against McCormick is dropped, leaving a charge of causing an affray. On June 27, 2008, Terence Davison is found not guilty of committing the murder. Two other men charged with affray are also cleared.

In November 2005, the McCartney sisters and Bridgeen Hagans, the former partner of McCartney, refuse to accept the Outstanding Achievement award at the Women of the Year Lunch, because it would mean their sharing a platform with Margaret Thatcher, whom they dislike.

In December 2005, the McCartney sisters meet with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and tell him they believe the murder had been ordered by a senior IRA member, and that Sinn Féin was still not doing all it could to help them.

On January 31, 2007, two years after the murder, and in line with the party’s new policy of supporting civil policing, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says that anyone with information about the murder should go to the police.

On May 5, 2015, an IRA man believed to have been involved in the death of McCartney, Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison, is shot dead. Early in the investigation the police rule out either a sectarian attack or the involvement of dissident republicans.

The McCartney family has lived in the Short Strand area of Belfast for five generations. However, some local people in the Short Strand area, which is a largely nationalist area, does not welcome their dispute with the IRA. A campaign of intimidation by republicans drives members of the family and McCartney’s former fiancée to relocate and also causes one member to close her business in the city centre. The last McCartney sister to leave the area, Paula, departs Short Strand on October 26, 2005.

The family remain in contact with the family of Joseph Rafferty of Dublin, who dies under similar circumstances on April 12, 2005.


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Death of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare

John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare PC (Ire), an Anglo-Irish politician who serves as the Attorney-General for Ireland from 1783 to 1789 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789 to 1802, dies in Dublin on January 28, 1802. He remains a deeply controversial figure in Irish history, being described variously as an old fashioned anti-Catholic Whig political party hardliner and an early advocate of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain (which finally happens in 1801, shortly before his death). 

Fitzgibbon is an early and extremely militant opponent of Catholic emancipation. The Earl is possibly the first person to suggest to King George III that granting royal assent to any form of Catholic Emancipation will violate his coronation oath.

FitzGibbon is born in 1748 near Donnybrook, Dublin, the son of John FitzGibbon of Ballysheedy, County Limerick, and his wife Isabella Grove, daughter of John Grove, of Ballyhimmock, County Cork. His father is born a Catholic but converts to the state religion in order to become a lawyer, and amasses a large fortune. He has three sisters, Arabella, Elizabeth, and Eleanor.

FitzGibbon is educated at Trinity College Dublin and Christ Church, Oxford. He enters the Irish House of Commons in 1778 as Member for Dublin University, and holds this seat until 1783, when he is appointed Attorney-General for Ireland. From the same year, he represents Kilmallock until 1790. He is appointed High Sheriff of County Limerick for 1782.

When appointed Lord Chancellor for Ireland in 1789, FitzGibbon is granted his first peerage as Baron FitzGibbon, of Connello Lower in County Limerick, in the peerage of Ireland that year. This does not entitle him to a seat in the British House of Lords, only in the Irish House of Lords. His later promotions come mostly in the peerage of Ireland, being advanced to a Viscountcy (1793) and the Earldom of Clare in 1795. He finally achieves a seat in the British House of Lords in 1799 when created Baron FitzGibbon, of Sidbury in the County of Devon, in the Peerage of Great Britain.

FitzGibbon is a renowned champion of the Protestant Ascendancy and an opponent of Catholic emancipation. He despises the Parliament of Ireland‘s popular independent Constitution of 1782. He is also personally and politically opposed to the Irish politician Henry Grattan who urges a moderate course in the Irish Parliament, and is responsible for defeating Grattan’s efforts to reform the Irish land tithe system (1787–1789) under which Irish Catholic farmers (and all non-Anglican farmers) are forced to financially support the minority Anglican Church of Ireland. These are not fully repealed until 1869 when the Church of Ireland is finally disestablished, although Irish tithes are commuted after the Tithe War (1831–1836).

FitzGibbon opposes the Irish Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, for which, in a “magnificently controlled vituperation in vigorous, colloquial heroic couplets,” The Gibbonade, he is pilloried by the satirist Henrietta Battier. But acceding to pressure exerted through the Irish executive by government of William Pitt in London, intent, in advance of war with the new French Republic, to placate Catholic opinion, he is persuaded to recommend its acceptance in the Irish House of Lords. Pitt, and King George III, who had been petitioned by delegates from the Catholic Committee in Dublin, expects Ireland to follow the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and admit Catholics to the parliamentary franchise (although not to Parliament itself), enter the professions and assume public office.

FitzGibbon’s role in the recall, soon after his arrival, of the popular pro-Emancipation Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, is debatable. Although he is probably politically opposed to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Fitzwilliam is recalled, apparently due to his own independent actions. Fitzwilliam is known to be friendly to the Ponsonby family (he is married to one of their daughters), and is generally a Foxite liberal Whig. His close association with and patronage of Irish Whigs led by Grattan and Ponsonby during his short tenure, along with his alleged support of an immediate effort to secure Catholic emancipation in a manner not authorized by the British cabinet is probably what leads to his recall. Thus, if any is to blame in the short-lived “Fitzwilliam episode” it is the great Irish politician Henry Grattan and the Ponsonby brothers – presumably William Ponsonby, later Lord Imokilly, and his brother John Ponsonby—not to mention Lord Fitzwilliam himself. Irish Catholics at the time and later naturally see things very differently and blame hardline Protestants such as FitzGibbon.

Irish Catholics and FitzGibbon agree on one point apparently – Irish political and economic union with Great Britain, which eventually takes place in 1801. Pitt wants Union with Ireland concomitantly with Catholic emancipation, commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Irish Catholic priesthood. Union is opposed by most hardline Irish Protestants, as well as liberals such as Grattan. FitzGibbon has been a strong supporter of the Union since 1793 but refuses to have Catholic emancipation with the Union.

In a speech to the Irish House of Lords on February 10, 1800, FitzGibbon elucidates his point of view on union: “I hope and feel as becomes a true Irishman, for the dignity and independence of my country, and therefore I would elevate her to her proper station, in the rank of civilised nations. I wish to advance her from the degraded post of mercenary province, to the proud station of an integral and governing member of the greatest empire in the world.”

In the end, FitzGibbon’s views win out, leading to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland without any concessions for Ireland’s Catholic majority (or for that matter, Catholics in the rest of the new United Kingdom). He later claims that he had been duped by the way in which the Act was passed with the new Viceroy Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, promising reforms to Irish Catholics, and is bitterly opposed to any concessions during the short remainder of his life.

The role of the Earl of Clare (as FitzGibbon becomes in 1795) as Lord Chancellor of Ireland during the period of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is questionable. According to some, he supports a hardline policy which uses torture, murder and massacre to crush the rebellion, or that as Lord Chancellor, he has considerable influence on military affairs, and that martial law cannot be imposed without his consent. Others allege that as Lord Chancellor, he has no say in military affairs and the Encyclopædia Britannica states that he is “neither cruel nor immoderate and was inclined to mercy when dealing with individuals.” However, the same source also states that “(FitzGibbon)… was a powerful supporter of a repressive policy toward Irish Catholics”. His former side is displayed by sparing the lives of the captured United Irish leaders, “State prisoners,” in return for their confession of complicity and provision of information relating to the planning of the rebellion. However, this willingness of the prisoners to partake of the agreement is spurred by the execution of the brothers John and Henry Sheares on July 14, 1798.

In contrast to the leniency shown to the largely upper-class leadership, the full weight of military repression is inflicted upon the common people throughout the years 1797–98 with untold thousands suffering imprisonment, torture, transportation and death. FitzGibbon is inclined to show no mercy to unrepentant rebels and, in October 1798, he expresses his disgust upon the capture of Wolfe Tone that he has been granted a trial, and his belief that Tone should be hanged as soon as he set foot on land.

FitzGibbon is quick to recognise that sectarianism is a useful ally to divide the rebels and prevent the United Irishmen from achieving their goal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, writing in June 1798, “In the North nothing will keep the rebels quiet but the conviction that where treason has broken out the rebellion is merely popish.”

Another anecdote is to the effect of FitzGibbon’s callousness. Supposedly, upon being informed during a debate in the Irish Parliament that innocent as well as guilty are suffering atrocities during the repression, he replies, “Well suppose it were so…,” his callous reply purportedly shocking William Pitt.

FitzGibbon is noted by some as a good, improving landlord to both his Protestant and Catholic tenants. Some claim that the tenants of his Mountshannon estate call him “Black Jack” FitzGibbon. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim, although there is little to no evidence on his dealings as a landlord. Irish nationalists and others point out that while he might be interested in the welfare of his own tenants on his own estate, he treats other Irish Catholics very differently. Without further evidence, his role as a Protestant landowner in mainly Catholic Ireland is of little importance against his known dealings as Lord Chancellor.

FitzGibbon dies at home, 6 Ely Place near St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 28, 1802, and is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard. A hero to Protestant hardliners, but despised by the majority Catholic population, his funeral cortege is the cause of a riot and, according to a widespread story, a number of dead cats are thrown at his coffin as it departs Ely Place.


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Gerry Adams Says IRA Will Not Meet Arms Deadline

On January 27, 2000, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams indicates that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) will not deliver arms ahead of the Ulster Unionist Party’s (UUP) February deadline.

With a report due on Monday, January 31, and widely expected to state that the IRA is not ready to disarm, the Northern Ireland peace process appears headed for a fresh crisis. The report by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, head of the province’s independent commission overseeing the handing in of weapons, is expected to confirm that no arms have been turned in.

The Ireland on Sunday newspaper says de Chastelain will tell the British and Irish governments that the IRA has put most of its weapons into secret, sealed dumps in the Republic of Ireland. Such disclosures put enormous pressure on Adams, the leader of the Irish republican political party, Sinn Féin. 

The UUP, the province’s main Protestant political group, has already threatened to pull out of Northern Ireland‘s fledgling power-sharing government if the IRA does not start disarming.

The UUP calls a top-level party meeting for February 12. A negative report from the decommissioning body will heighten fears that UUP leader David Trimble will make good on his threat to resign as leader of the new government, effectively allowing his party to shut down the province’s first government in 25 years.

Of Adams’s role in the disarmament process, Trimble says, “He asked us to create the circumstances to help him … we did that … we took the risk and created the situation he asked us to create. “Now we hope he now is able to demonstrate his good faith by responding.”

Adams says, “I am concerned at what appears to be an attempt by unionists to hijack the entire process, put up unilateral demands, perhaps in the course of that, tear down the institutions that are only two months in being. I understand why unionists want decommissioning. It is just not within my grasp to deliver it on their terms, and neither is it my responsibility.”

Adams says he can give no assurances that the IRA will hand over its weapons by May 22, the date set by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for the completion of disarmament, although he stresses he is committed to decommissioning. “No, I can’t and it isn’t up to me,” Adams tells BBC Television when asked if he can guarantee disarmament by May.

Political insiders hint that the report will not be published until Monday (January 31) afternoon, suggesting the highly sensitive document is still being worked on by de Chastelain.

Any unionist pullout from the home-rule government on February 12 will create a political vacuum. Britain may intervene before that to suspend the fledgling executive, in the hope that it can be resurrected quickly if progress eventually is made on disarmament. Sinn Féin warns that either course of action could lead to the IRA breaking off contact with de Chastelain and the ending of disarmament prospects.

Meanwhile, on the eve of the report, thousands of Roman Catholics mark an event and day that symbolizes the province’s past troubles — Bloody Sunday.

Waving Irish flags, some 5,000 protesters retrace the steps of a civil rights march in Londonderry in 1972 that ended in bloodshed when British troops fired on unarmed protesters and killed thirteen people, mostly teenagers. A fourteenth man died later from his wounds. Victims’ relatives and local children carry fourteen white crosses, photos of the dead and a banner that reads, “Bloody Sunday, the day innocence died.” The march passes the scene of the killings and ends in front of Londonderry’s city hall — a spot where the 1972 march was supposed to have finished.

Organizers issue a message to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that they want a forthcoming inquiry not to end in the same way as a probe held within months of the killings, which exonerated the British soldiers by suggesting that some of the victims had handled weapons that day. “Twenty-eight years on from Bloody Sunday, there is still no recognition of the role the British government played in the premeditated attack on unarmed demonstrators,” Barbara de Brun, a top IRA official, tells the crowd.

Relatives of those killed are upset that soldiers who took part in the shootings would be allowed to remain anonymous during the new probe. They are also concerned about a newspaper report that the army recently destroyed thirteen of the rifles used by the soldiers, complicating any ballistics tests at the inquiry.

“Once again, the political and military establishment are up to their old tricks. We won’t accept a public relations exercise,” Alana Burke, who was injured by an armored car during the Bloody Sunday march, tells the crowd.

(From: “Hopes dim for IRA disarmament, peace accord” by Nic Robertson and Reuters, CNN, cnn.com, January 30, 2000)


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Death of Hume Babington, Church of Ireland Clergyman

Hume Babington, Church of Ireland clergyman, dies on January 23, 1886. He serves as the rector at Moviddy, County Cork, for fifty-three years from 1833 to 1886, and is a proponent of secular education in Ireland.

Babington is born on September 1, 1804, to the Rev. Richard Babington and his wife Mary Boyle, both members of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry. His father, the rector of Lower Comber (Diocese of Derry), leads an extravagant lifestyle and leaves debts of £40,000 on his death in 1831, aged 66, equivalent to some £4.1 million as of 2019. His father’s debt is paid off by his two brothers Richard (1795-1870) and Anthony of Creevagh (1800-1869). Another brother is Major General William Babington. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Babington begins his career as a curate of Lower Cumber, where his father is rector, in 1827. He becomes rector of Moviddy in 1833, at the age of 29. As rector, he carries out improvements worth the equivalent of £166,766 in 2019. As a clergyman he is part of a wave toward secular education in Ireland in the 1800s. In this capacity he is remembered as a “very forward thinking individual.” He is one of the signatories of a progressive booklet titled Declaration in Favour of United Secular Education in Ireland in 1866. The declaration notes, on behalf of the united Church of England and Ireland, “We entirely admit the justice and policy of the rule which protects scholars from interference with their religious principles and thus enables members of different denominations, to receive together in harmony and peace, the benefits of a good education.”

Babington is also, notably, in 1843, an addressee of the “Crookstown letter,” a famous incident at the time covered by The Cork Examiner and Cork Commercial Courier. He publishes, in the Cork Constitution, the contents of a threatening letter he had received in which it threatens him, among others, with murder if he does not become a repealer of the Acts of Union 1800 and with making a bonfire of hay in his farmyard if he does not show the letter to its other addresses. The letter is allegedly to have been written by a Roman Catholic resident of Crookstown, County Cork. The Roman Catholic parish priest, Fr. Daly, and parishioners refute the allegation that the letter had been authored by a Roman Catholic and claim that, conversely, the letter is an invention of a local Protestant who wrote “repeal or die” on the Crookstown Bridge. A local magistrate, J. B. Warren, to whom the letter has also been addressed, pledges to carry out an investigation but Babington does not hand over the original letter, causing the local Roman Catholic population to regard his publication of the letter in the press as “prejudiced, premature and defamatory of the character of the people whose industry he derives his income.” Babington states that he has always been on friendly terms with the Roman Catholic parish priest and his Roman Catholic parishioners and has no intention of offending them but is in fact pushing to publish it by local magistrates. He continues as rector of Moviddy for another 43 years following this incident.

Babington is also involved with the Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor of Ireland.

In 1836, Babington marries Esther, daughter of Richard Nettles, Esq., JP, of Nettleville, County Cork, with whom he has five sons and eight daughters.

Babington dies at the age of 81 on January 23, 1886, at Moviddy Rectory, County Cork. He is buried with his wife, Esther, who died at the age of 70 on August 29, 1878.


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Beginning of the Siege of Duncannon

The siege of Duncannon begins on January 20, 1645, during the Irish Confederate Wars. An Irish Catholic Confederate army under Thomas Preston besieges and successfully takes the town of Duncannon in County Wexford from an English Parliamentarian garrison. The siege is the first conflict in Ireland in which mortars are utilized.

At the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, most of south-eastern Ireland falls to the Catholic insurgents. Roughly 1,000 rebels blockade Duncannon, which is heavily fortified and contains an English garrison of about 300 men. Around 150 of the English troops are killed in forays against the Irish at nearby Redmond’s Hall, but without siege artillery, or expertise in siege warfare, the rebels are unable to take Duncannon.

Hostilities continue throughout 1642, as the Irish, now organised as the Irish Confederacy raid the town’s hinterland. As in much of Ireland, the conflict is bitter. In one incident, Laurence Esmonde, 1st Baron Esmonde, the Royalist commander, hangs 16 Irish prisoners who have been taken at nearby Ramsgrange. In response, the Irish execute 18 English prisoners whom they have been holding.

In 1643, because of his need for troops to fight in the English Civil War, Charles I signs a ceasefire with the Irish Confederates. As a result, hostilities between Duncannon and the Catholic-held surrounding area are suspended.

However, in 1644, the English garrison of Cork, under Murrough O’Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, unhappy with the Royalist truce with the Irish Confederates, declares for the English Parliament, who are to remain hostile to Irish Catholic forces throughout the 1640s. Esmonde, under pressure from elements of his garrison, also changes to the side of Parliament and effectively re-declares war on the Catholic Confederates. His motives are unclear: though he is a Protestant convert, the Esmonde family are Anglo-Irish Roman Catholics, and he owes his entire advancement to the Crown.

Duncannon is a strategically important town for two reasons. Firstly, it has formidable defences. Secondly and more importantly, its guns overlook the sea route to Waterford and New Ross, two of the most important Catholic-held towns and also ports at which the Confederates receive military aid from Catholic Europe.

Needing to keep this channel open and also fearing the presence of an English garrison deep in their territory, the Confederates’ Supreme Council in Kilkenny despatches Thomas Preston, general of their Leinster Army, to take Duncannon in January 1645. Preston has at his disposal 1,300 men, four cannons and a mortar. The mortar, the first of its kind to be used in Ireland has been donated by Spain the previous year and is commanded by a French military engineer named Nicholas La Loue. La Loue had served with Preston in Flanders and is chief of engineering in the Leinster Army.

Duncannon possesses formidable defences. For one thing, it is located on a peninsula and can only be approached from the north, the other three sides jutting out into the sea. Just off the town are docked four Parliamentarian ships, which are supplying Duncannon with food and reinforcements. Secondly, it possesse two lines of fortifications, the outer line being a more modern low deep rampart protected by a dry ditch and the inner wall being a medieval curtain wall, complete with three towers. However, it has two grave weaknesses, first, it is overlooked by a hill to the north, from which an attacker can fire into the town and, secondly, the water supply is located outside the walls. 

Preston arrives at Duncannon on January 20 and proceeds to construct a ring of trenches which cut off Duncannon on its landward side. From the hill that overlooks the town to the north, his guns are able to fire on a squadron of four Parliamentarian ships that are docked off Duncannon and providing the town with supplies. The flagship, the Great Louis, is badly damaged, its mast wrecked by cannon fire, and it takes several more hits from the mortar as it tries to get away. The ship sinks in deep water, drowning its crew and 200 soldiers who are on board.

Having cut off Duncannon’s supply from the sea, Preston proceeds to dig saps closer to the walls, the ultimate aim being to bring his cannon close enough to the walls in order to blast a breach and open the way for an assault. His engineers also dig a mine underneath one of the town’s bastions. All the while, the town’s defenders are kept under a bombardment by the mortar and, as the Confederate troops get closer to the walls, by sharpshooters. On March 12, one such sniper kills the fort’s second in command, one Captain Lurcan, who is hit in the head by a bullet.

On March 16, by which time the Irish trenches are “within pistol shot of the walls,” Preston orders the mine to be exploded, opening a breach in Duncannon’s outer walls. The Irish infantry then assault the town, but are beaten off with some losses. The following day, Saint Patricks Day, Preston tries again and this time his troops succeed in taking the town’s outer, more modern walls but are stopped at Duncannon’s inner, medieval ramparts. They succeed in occupying one of the town’s towers for an hour before being beaten back. Geoffrey Baron, a Confederate politician, who keeps a diary of the siege, reports that 24 Irish soldiers are killed in the two assaults.

At this point, Preston summons Esmonde to surrender, before he has to “proceed to extremities.” This is a delicate threat, implying that if the town falls to an assault, its defenders will be put to the sword – as is customary in contemporary siege warfare. Esmonde is also advised to surrender by the Parliamentarian vice admiral, William Smith, who is anchored offshore with seven ships, but cannot break through to relieve the town. In a letter that reaches Esmonde on March 11, Smith warns him that “if the rebels take the fort by storming it, they will undoubtedly put you all to death…you should agree with thy adversary while thou art in the way.” Esmond has Smith’s letter publicly read to his troops after the assaults of March 16-17 to discourage those who favour holding out.

Alongside the risk of massacre, the English garrison is also very low on gunpowder and water. The town’s only source of fresh water, a well, is behind the Confederate siege lines.

In light of these facts, Esmonde formally surrenders Duncannon to Preston on March 18. The Confederates take possession of the town but its garrison is allowed to march away to Youghal, which is in Protestant hands. However, they have to leave behind the town’s 18 artillery pieces. Esmonde himself dies a feways after the end of the siege. Preston goes on to briefly besiege Youghal, but bad weather, a lack of supplies and squabbling with James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, the Confederate Munster general, puts an end to his campaign for the winter. 

The siege is of importance in that it reopens the sea route into Waterford and eliminates a hostile English garrison in Confederate territory. Preston, who had for many years been the Spanish military governor of Leuven, is highly experienced in siege warfare and his conduct of the siege draws widespread praise. Not only does he take the town, but he does so at a relatively low cost. Sixty-seven Confederate soldiers die in the siege, of whom roughly 30 die of disease. Given that the campaign is conducted in mid-winter, in an age when disease routinely kills many more soldiers than combat, this represents a considerable logistical achievement on the part of the Irish general.

The Great Lewis, the Parliamentarian ship sunk during the siege, is rediscovered in 1999 and raised in 2004.

Duncannon is besieged again during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, as part of the Siege of Waterford. It repels a siege by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 but surrenders after a lengthy blockade by Henry Ireton in 1650.


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Birth of Gaetano Alibrandi, Papal Nuncio to Ireland

Gaetano Alibrandi, a senior papal diplomat of the Catholic Church and former Personal Secretary to Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI), is born on January 14, 1914, at Castiglione di Sicilia in the province of Catania, Sicily.

Alibrandi is ordained priest on November 1, 1936, and obtains a Doctor of Divinity from the Pontifical Lateran University and a Doctorate on Civil and Canon Law. He enters the Diplomatic Corps of the Holy See in 1941, serving for five years in the Vatican Secretariat of State and is then a staff member in the apostolic nunciatures in Italy and Turkey before coming to Ireland as a counsellor at the Apostolic Nunciature for two years from 1954 to 1956. He later describes his first Irish posting as “a spiritual bath.”

In 1961, Alibrandi receives episcopal consecration as titular Archbishop of Binda by Cardinal Fernando Cento upon his appointment as Nuncio of Chile, followed quickly by similar appointments in Lebanon (1963). As Apostolic Nuncio to Chile, he leads the Chilean delegation to the Second Vatican Council.

Alibrandi is appointed Papal Nuncio to Ireland on April 19, 1969, shortly after the outbreak of the Troubles. 

This is a challenging time for the Catholic Church in Ireland, then led by Cardinal William Conway, as it adjusts to both the internal changes generated by the Second Vatican Council and the wider social changes. He is ill-suited to coping with these changes and in particular the violence in Northern Ireland. It is widely assumed that he sees to it that the more overtly nationalist Tomás Ó Fiaich is appointed to Armagh in 1977 after the death of Cardinal Conway. The journalist and author Ed Moloney in his book on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) asserts that Alibrandi’s “sympathy for the IRA was a constant source of friction with the government in London.”

Alibrani plays a major role in the 1971 decision by the Vatican to accept the resignation of John Charles McQuaid as Archbishop of Dublin. This comes as a shock to McQuaid, who expected that he would be allowed to remain for some time after the normal retirement age of 75.

In many of the episcopal appointments made while Alibrandi is nuncio, he favours doctrinally “sound,” right-of-centre priests and in the case of the Archdiocese of Dublin picks two priests, Kevin McNamara and Desmond Connell, who are notably ill-suited. In a profile of the Archbishop at the time of his retirement, T. P. O’Mahony observes in The Tablet, “although he rarely gave interviews, and never overtly intervened in policy-making or in public controversies, it is beyond dispute that Archbishop Alibrandi wielded considerable influence behind the scenes.”

The respected academic and church historian Dermot Keogh assessing this period argues that “there was a general view that the best candidates had not been appointed…that a number were not up to the job, that most of the appointees shared a defensive attitude to matters of church and state.”

Alibrandi has “a very testy relationship with three Taoisigh – Jack Lynch, Liam Cosgrave and Garret FitzGerald.” After reaching the retirement age of 75, he returns to his home town in Sicily where he dies on July 3, 2003. His funeral Mass was celebrated on Saturday in Castiglione di Sicilia by Archbishop Paolo Romeo, Apostolic Nuncio to Italy. A memorial Mass for Archbishop Alibrandi will be celebrated by Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, on Friday, 11 July at 19.30 in the Church of Our Lady Help of Christians, Navan Road, Dublin.

It is reported in September 2012 during the second Dr. Garret FitzGerald Memorial Lecture at University College Cork (UCC) by Seán Donlon, former secretary general at the Department of Foreign Affairs, that “It came to our [Department of Foreign Affairs] attention that a substantial amount in three bank accounts in Dublin [held by the archbishop] were way in excess of what was needed to run the nunciature. The source [of the money] appeared to be South America.” Donlon goes on to say, “Because of its size, we thought it appropriate to ask if the funds belonged to the Holy See.” When contacted for an answer, Alibrandi “quickly answered ‘no’ and that they belonged to ‘family’. When it was pointed out to him that the money was then liable under Irish taxation law to DIRT, he said he would retire shortly and the accounts would be closed.”


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Founding of the Irish Confederation

The Irish Confederation, an Irish nationalist independence movement, is established on January 13, 1847, by members of the Young Ireland movement who seceded from Daniel O’Connell‘s Repeal Association. Historian Theodore William Moody describes it as “the official organisation of Young Ireland.”

In June 1846, Sir Robert Peel‘s Tory Ministry falls, and the Whigs under Lord John Russell comes to power. Daniel O’Connell, founder of the Repeal Association which campaigns for a repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland, simultaneously attempts to move the Association into supporting the Russell administration and English Liberalism.

The intention is that Repeal agitation is to be damped down in return for a profuse distribution of patronage through Conciliation Hall, home of the Repeal Association. On June 15, 1846, Thomas Francis Meagher denounces English Liberalism in Ireland saying that there is a suspicion that the national cause of Repeal will be sacrificed to the Whig government and that the people who are striving for freedom will be “purchased back into factious vassalage.” Meagher and the other “Young Irelanders” (an epithet of opprobrium used by O’Connell to describe the young men of The Nation newspaper), as active Repealers, vehemently denounce in Conciliation Hall any movement toward English political parties, be they Whig or Tory, so long as Repeal is denied.

The “Tail” as the “corrupt gang of politicians who fawned on O’Connell” are named, and who hope to gain from the government places decide that the Young Irelanders must be driven from the Repeal Association. The Young Irelanders are to be presented as revolutionaries, factionists, infidels and secret enemies of the Church. For this purpose, resolutions are introduced to the Repeal Association on July 13 which declare that under no circumstances is a nation justified in asserting its liberties by force of arms. The Young Irelanders, as members of the association, have never advocated the use of physical force to advance the cause of repeal and oppose any such policy. Known as the “Peace Resolutions,” they declare that physical force is immoral under any circumstances to obtain national rights. Meagher agrees that only moral and peaceful means should be adopted by the Association, but if it is determined that Repeal cannot be carried by those means, a no less honourable one he would adopt though it be more perilous. The resolutions are again raised on July 28 in the Association and Meagher then delivers his famous “Sword Speech.”

Addressing the Peace Resolutions, Meagher holds that there is no necessity for them. Under the existing circumstances of the country, any provocation to arms will be senseless and wicked. He dissents from the Resolutions because by assenting to them he would pledge himself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force “in all countries, at all times, and in every circumstance.” There are times when arms will suffice, and when political amelioration calls for “a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood.” He then “eloquently defended physical force as an agency in securing national freedom.” Having been at first semi-hostile, Meagher carries the audience to his side and the plot against the Young Irelanders is placed in peril of defeat. Observing this he is interrupted by O’Connell’s son, John, who declares that either he or Meagher must leave the hall. William Smith O’Brien then protests against John O’Connell’s attempt to suppress a legitimate expression of opinion, and leaves with other prominent Young Irelanders, and never returns.

After negotiations for a reunion have failed, the seceders decide to establish a new organisation which is to be called the Irish Confederation. Its founders determine to revive the uncompromising demand for a national Parliament with full legislative and executive powers. They are resolute on a complete prohibition of place-hunting or acceptance of office under the existing Government. They wish to return to the honest policy of the earlier years of the Repeal Association, and are supported by the young men, who have shown their repugnance for the corruption and insincerity of Conciliation Hall by their active sympathy with the seceders. There are extensive indications that many of the previously Unionist class, in both the cities and among land owners, are resentful of the neglect of Irish needs by the British Parliament since the famine began. What they demand is vital legislative action to provide both employment and food, and to prevent all further export of the corn, cattle, pigs and butter which are still leaving the country. On this there is a general consensus of Irish opinion according to Dennis Gwynn, “such as had not been known since before the Act of Union.”

The first meeting of the Irish Confederation takes place in the Rotunda, Dublin, on January 13, 1847. The chairperson for the first meeting is John Shine Lawlor, the honorary secretaries being John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy. Duffy is later replaced by Meagher. Ten thousand members are enrolled, but of the gentry there are very few, the middle class stand apart and the Catholic clergy are unfriendly. In view of the poverty of the people, subscriptions are purely voluntary, the founders of the new movement bearing the cost themselves if necessary.

In the 1847 United Kingdom general election, three Irish Confederation candidates stand – Richard O’Gorman in Limerick City, William Smith O’Brien in County Limerick and Thomas Chisholm Anstey in Youghal. O’Brien and Anstey are elected.

Following mass emigration by Irish people to England, the Irish Confederation then organises there also. There are more than a dozen Confederate Clubs in Liverpool and over 700 members of 16 clubs located in Manchester and Salford.


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Death of Nicholas Callan, Priest & Scientist

Father Nicholas Joseph Callan, Catholic priest and physicist, dies in Maynooth, County Kildare, on January 10, 1864. He is Professor of Natural Philosophy in Maynooth College in Maynooth from 1834, and is best known for his work on the induction coil.

Callan is born on December 22, 1799, in Darver, County Louth. He attends school at an academy in Dundalk. His local parish priest, Father Andrew Levins, then takes him in hand as an altar boy and Mass server and sees him start the priesthood at Navan seminary. He enters Maynooth College in 1816. In his third year at Maynooth, he studies natural and experimental philosophy under Dr. Cornelius Denvir. He introduces the experimental method into his teaching and has an interest in electricity and magnetism.

Callan is ordained a priest in 1823 and goes to Rome to study at Sapienza University, obtaining a doctorate in divinity in 1826. While in Rome he becomes acquainted with the work of the pioneers in electricity such as Luigi Galvani (1737–98), who is a pioneer in bioelectricity, and Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), who is known especially for the development of the electric battery. In 1826, he returns to Maynooth as the new Professor of Natural Philosophy (now called physics), where he also begins working with electricity in his basement laboratory at the college.

Influenced by William Sturgeon and Michael Faraday, Callan begins work on the idea of the induction coil in 1834. He invents the first induction coil in 1836. An induction coil produces an intermittent high voltage alternating current from a low voltage direct current supply. It has a primary coil consisting of a few turns of thick wire wound around an iron core and subjected to a low voltage (usually from a battery). Wound on top of this is a secondary coil made up of many turns of thin wire. An iron armature and make-and-break mechanism repeatedly interrupts the current to the primary coil, producing a high voltage, rapidly alternating current in the secondary circuit.

Callan invents the induction coil because he needs to generate a higher level of electricity than currently available. He takes a bar of soft iron, about 2 feet long, and wraps it around with two lengths of copper wire, each about 200 feet long. He connects the beginning of the first coil to the beginning of the second. Finally, he connects a battery, much smaller than the enormous contrivance just described, to the beginning and end of winding one. He finds that when the battery contact is broken, a shock can be felt between the first terminal of the first coil and the second terminal of the second coil.

Further experimentation shows how the coil device can bring the shock from a small battery up the strength level of a big battery. So Callan tries making a bigger coil. With a battery of only 14 seven-inch plates, the device produces power enough for an electric shock “so strong that a person who took it felt the effects of it for several days.” He thinks of his creation as a kind of electromagnet, but what he actually makes is a primitive induction transformer.

Callan’s induction coil also uses an interrupter that consists of a rocking wire that repeatedly dips into a small cup of mercury (similar to the interrupters used by Charles Grafton Page). Because of the action of the interrupter, which can make and break the current going into the coil, he calls his device the “repeater.” Actually, this device is the world’s first transformer. He induces a high voltage in the second wire, starting with a low voltage in the adjacent first wire. The faster he interrupts the current, the bigger the spark. In 1837 he produces his giant induction machine using a mechanism from a clock to interrupt the current 20 times a second. It generates 15-inch sparks, an estimated 60,000 volts and the largest artificial bolt of electricity then seen.

Callan experiments with designing batteries after he finds the models available to him at the time to be insufficient for research in electromagnetism. Some previous batteries had used rare metals such as platinum or unresponsive materials like carbon and zinc. He finds that he can use inexpensive cast iron instead of platinum or carbon. For his Maynooth battery he uses iron casting for the outer casing and places a zinc plate in a porous pot (a pot that had an inside and outside chamber for holding two different types of acid) in the centre. Using a single fluid cell, he disposes of the porous pot and two different fluids. He is able to build a battery with just a single solution.

While experimenting with batteries, Callan also builds the world’s largest battery at that time. To construct this battery, he joins together 577 individual batteries (“cells“), which use over 30 gallons of acid. Since instruments for measuring current or voltages have not yet been invented, he measures the strength of a battery by measuring how much weight his electromagnet can lift when powered by the battery. Using his giant battery, his electromagnet lifts 2 tons. The Maynooth battery goes into commercial production in London. He also discovers an early form of galvanisation to protect iron from rusting when he is experimenting on battery design, and he patents the idea.

Callan dies at the age of 64 in Maynooth, County Kildare, on January 10, 1864. He is buried in the cemetery in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

The Callan Building on the north campus of Maynooth University, a university which is part of St. Patrick’s College until 1997, is named in his honour. In addition, Callan Hall in the south campus, is used through the 1990s for first year science lectures including experimental & mathematical physics, chemistry and biology. The Nicholas Callan Memorial Prize is an annual prize awarded to the best final year student in Experimental Physics.


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Death of T. K. Whitaker, Economist, Politician and Civil Servant

Thomas Kenneth Whitaker, Irish economist, politician, diplomat and civil servant, dies in Blackrock, Dublin, on January 9, 2017, a month after his 100th birthday. He serves as Secretary of Ireland’s Department of Finance from 1956 to 1969, as Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland from 1969 to 1976 and as a Senator from 1977 to 1982, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. He is considered one of the most influential civil servants in the history of the Irish State, with his economic policies greatly influencing the development of modern Ireland.

Whitaker is born in Rostrevor, a small town in the south of County Down, to Roman Catholic parents on December 8, 1916, and is reared in Drogheda, County Louth, in modest circumstances. Neither of his parents are from Ulster. His mother, Jane O’Connor, comes from Ballyguirey East, Labasheeda, County Clare. His father, Edward Whitaker, hails from County Westmeath and is assistant manager of a linen mill. He receives his primary and secondary education at the local CBS in Drogheda. He studies mathematics, Celtic studies and Latin by correspondence course at University of London, and is awarded external degrees in economics: a bachelor’s degree in 1941 and a master’s degree in 1952.

In 1956, Whitaker is appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance, at the age of thirty-nine. His appointment takes place at a time when Ireland’s economy is in deep depression. Economic growth is non-existent, inflation apparently insoluble, unemployment rife, living standards low and emigration at a figure not far below the birth rate. He believes that free trade, with increased competition and the end of protectionism, will become inevitable and that jobs will have to be created by a shift from agriculture to industry and services. He forms a team of officials within the department which produce a detailed study of the economy, culminating in a plan recommending policies for improvement. The plan is accepted by the government and is transformed into a white paper which becomes known as the First Programme for Economic Expansion, and quite unusually is published with his name attached in November 1958. The programme becomes known as the “Grey Book” which many argue brings the stimulus of foreign investment into the Irish economy. However, other reforms such as the Department of Industry and Commerce‘s export profits tax relief introduced in 1956, are opposed by Whitaker.

In 1977, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominates Whitaker as a member of the 14th Seanad. He serves as a Senator from 1977 to 1981, where he sits as an independent member.

In 1981, Whitaker is nominated to the 15th Seanad by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, where he serves until 1982. FitzGerald also appoints him to chair a Committee of Inquiry into the Irish penal system, and he chairs a Parole Board or Sentence Review Group for several years.

Whitaker also serves as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1976 to 1996. He was also President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and as such, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1985 to 1987. He has a very strong love for the Irish language throughout his career and the collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600–1900, edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is dedicated to Whitaker. From 1995 to 1996 he chairs the Constitution Review Group, an independent expert group established by the government, which publishes its report in July 1996.

Whitaker receives many national and international honours and tributes for his achievements during his lifetime, most notably the conferral of “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001 and Greatest Living Irish Person in 2002. In November 2014, the Institute of Banking confers an Honorary Fellowship on him and creates an annual T. K. Whitaker Scholarship in his name. In April 2015, he is presented with a lifetime achievement award by University College Dublin‘s Economics Society for his outstanding contribution to Ireland’s economic policy.

In November 2016, to mark his centenary year, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council acknowledges Whitaker’s “outstanding and progressive contribution to Irish public service and to society.” The Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Cormac Devlin, presents a special award to Whitaker which is accepted by Ken Whitaker on behalf of his father.

Whitaker marries Nora Fogarty in 1941 and they have six children. After his wife’s death in 1994, he remarries, to Mary Moore in 2005. The couple is invited to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2006 for his 90th birthday by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese. Mary Moore Whitaker dies in 2008. T. K. Whitaker turns 100 in December 2016 and dies a month later on January 9, 2017, having survived both of his wives. He is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin.

The main administrative building in Dundalk Institute of Technology is named after him, the T.K. Whitaker Building. Whitaker Square in the Grand Canal Dock area of Dublin 2 is named in his honour. The offices of the Economic and Social Research Institute are located on the square.


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Birth of Kate O’Connell, Former Fine Gael Politician

Katherine O’Connell (née Newman), a former Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Bay South constituency from 2016 to 2020, is born in Kilbeggan, County Westmeath, on January 3, 1980. During her time in the Dáil, O’Connell campaigns in favour of abortion rights as well as pushes for more funding for healthcare services in Ireland.

From 1999 to 2003, O’Connell studies to be a pharmacist at the University of Brighton, graduating with an M Pharm in the United Kingdom. She then works as a hospital pre-registrar in the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, before returning to Ireland to practice as a locum-pharmacist. By 2006, she and her husband open up their first pharmacy in Sandyford, and later open up pharmacies in Rathgar, and Rathfarnham.

O’Connell is a member of Dublin City Council for the local electoral area of Rathgar–Rathmines from 2014 to 2016.

O’Connell is selected by Fine Gael for the 2016 Irish general election to “recapture” their seat in Dublin Bay South from Lucinda Creighton, who had left the party in 2013 over her objection to the party’s position on abortion and in 2015 founded Renua, an anti-abortion party. During the campaign, O’Connell called Creighton’s anti-abortion views “incredibly sanctimonious” and suggests that Creighton is an “out of touch career politician” whose views on abortion are borne out of a lack of connection with the real world. The Irish Independent refers to these comments as O’Connell “tearing strips off” of Creighton. In the election, O’Connell is elected, while Creighton loses her seat.

In her time in the Dáil, O’Connell campaigns in favour of abortion rights as well as pushing for more funding for healthcare services in Ireland.

In October 2016, O’Connell responds to comments by the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin that TDs should remember their faith when legislating for abortion in Ireland by stating, “I don’t see why the archbishop’s views are in any way relevant. I don’t see why Archbishop Martin should be getting involved in women’s health issues. It is the same as asking my four-year-old. They [the Church] are entitled to their opinion, but I don’t put any weight in them. I don’t see what involvement the Catholic Church should have in women’s health issues”.

In November 2017, O’Connell confronts Barry Walsh, a member of Fine Gael’s executive council, with a dossier of tweets documenting that he repeatedly and frequently derogates women politicians, often calling them bitches, including fellow members of Fine Gael. After the leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar comments that Walsh should resign, he does so.

O’Connell loses her seat at the 2020 Irish general election, placing 5th in the 4-seat constituency. In an August 2020 interview, she attributes her loss, in part, to being the running mate of the Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, in an election fought over an ongoing housing crisis in Ireland.

On May 7, 2021, O’Connell declares she will not seek to be the Fine Gael candidate for the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election. She suggests she will not be able to win a party selection again due to her relationship with the Fine Gael leadership souring in the meantime, partially because of her vocal support of Simon Coveney over Leo Varadkar in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election. She also suggests many local Fine Gael branch members in Dublin South Bay regard her as an outsider and a “parachute candidate” due to the fact she is originally from County Westmeath, and have turned against her over this. The Phoenix offers the view that O’Connell would not be nominated because she has turned the Fine Gael leadership against her while lobbying for her sister, Mary Newman Julian, to be the party’s candidate in a 2018 Seanad by-election. In particular, a meeting between her and Simon Coveney in which her expectations are read as entitled is cited as hurting her relationships. Fine Gael’s candidate in the by-election is James Geoghegan, who had previously left the party to join Lucinda Creighton in Renua, but returns to Fine Gael after that party collapsed. He loses the by-election to Labour‘s Ivana Bacik, a senator for Dublin University and veteran pro-choice campaigner.

In October 2024, O’Connell leaves Fine Gael to contest the next general election in Dublin Bay South as an independent candidate. She fails to be elected or to achieve the one-quarter of the quota necessary to recoup her election expenses.

O’Connell states her family, the Newmans, have been “involved in Fine Gael since the 1960s,” starting when her maternal grandfather ran for Fine Gael as a councillor. Her father, Michael Newman, is also a Fine Gael councillor while Fine Gael minister Patrick Cooney is considered a family friend. O’Connell states that growing up, she and her family were greatly influenced by the progressive politics of Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald. Her sister, Mary Newman Julian, is also active in politics and contests elections for the Dáil in Tipperary and for Seanad Éireann, while another sister, Theresa Newman, works for a period as O’Connell’s political adviser in Leinster House. Her brother-in-law, Hugh O’Connell, is a prominent political journalist and editor who has worked for several Irish publications.

In 2018, during debates in the Dáil regarding abortion, O’Connell discloses personal details of a traumatic pregnancy she herself had experienced. During the pregnancy, she is told her child has only a 10% chance of survival. This prompts her to consider terminating the pregnancy. Ultimately, she decides to continue the pregnancy. The child is born with organs outside of the body but survives the birth. She cites the difficult decisions made during that pregnancy as having greatly informed her views on abortion.