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Tag Archives: County Kerry


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Birth of Seán Cronin, Journalist & Irish Army Officer

Seán Gerard Cronin, journalist and former Irish Army officer and twice Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born in Dublin on August 29, 1922.

Cronin is the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County Kerry Gaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.

During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre director Alan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.

Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.

Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.

Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.

Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).

Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.

Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.

In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.

By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.

In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.

Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.

After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.


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Heavy Fighting in Newcastle West, County Limerick

Nationalist forces enter Newcastle West, County Limerick, on Monday, August 7, 1922, after a twelve-hour battle, in which twelve anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, sometimes referred to as Irregulars, are killed. The casualties of the Nationalists are less than those of the Irregulars.

Taking little respite after Sunday’s labors, the Nationals advance from Rathkele on Monday morning, and by midday are in sight of their fresh objective. Armored cars enter the town and machine gun fire is directed against a party of Irregulars, causing many casualties.

When the artillery goes into action against the headquarters of the Irregulars, the Irregulars flee precipitately along Cord road.

Owing to the slow progress in the operations in Southern Ireland, the meeting of Dáil Éireann, scheduled to open Saturday, is postponed again.

The official army bulletin announces that the Nationals captured Castle Island on Saturday, August 5. It says that the counties of Cork and Kerry with a part of South Tipperary and a small area in County Waterford are the only districts held by the Irregulars with any degree of security.

The streets of Dublin are lined with great crowds of people on Tuesday, August 8, for the military funeral of nine National Army soldiers who were killed in fighting the Republican Irregulars in County Kerry. Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government, and all the leading officers of the army in Dublin march beside the hearses. Each coffin is covered with the Republican tricolour. There are many clergymen and other civilians in the funeral procession.

Prominent Catholics of Dublin and Belfast are trying to effect a better understanding between the Ulster and Free State Governments, according to the Daily Mail. This newspaper further states that all efforts to this end, which have all been taken with the advice and approval of leading English Catholics, are without official character.

A message from Strabane, County Tyrone, received by the Exchange Telegraph Company on August 8 states that a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities is imminent, the terms of agreement having been practically arranged in negotiations proceeding in London.

In Downing Street, however, all knowledge of any such Irish negotiations is disclaimed and a telegram from Belfast quotes Ulster Government officials as denying that a settlement with the Free State is imminent.

The Free State Government is also unaware of any negotiations for a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities. It is further states that such negotiations are unlikely to take place.

(From: “Irish Irregulars Routed With Loss,” The New York Times, August 9, 1922 | Pictured: General Michael Collins inspects a soldier at Newcastle West, County Limerick, August 8, 1922)


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Death of Malachi Martin, Irish American Catholic Priest

Malachi Brendan Martin, also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor, and writer on the Catholic Church, dies in New York City on July 27, 1999.

Martin is born on July 23, 1921, in Ballylongford, County Kerry, to a middle-class family in which the children are raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, have five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons become priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.

Martin attends Belvedere College in Dublin, then studies philosophy for three years at University College Dublin (UCD). On September 6, 1939, he becomes a novice with the Society of Jesus. He teaches for three years, spending four years at Milltown Park, Dublin, and is ordained in August 1954.

Upon completion of his degree course in Dublin, Martin is sent to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he takes a doctorate in archaeology, Oriental history, and Semitic languages. He starts postgraduate studies at both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the University of Oxford. He specializes in intertestamentary studies, Jesus in Jewish and Islamic sources, Ancient Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts. He undertakes additional study in rational psychology, experimental psychology, physics, and anthropology.

Martin participates in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and publishes 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He does archaeological research and works extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. He assists in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research. In 1958, he publishes a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Martin’s years in Rome coincide with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), which is to transform the Catholic Church in a way that the initially liberal Martin begins to find distressing. He becomes friends with Monsignor George Gilmary Higgins and Father John Courtney Murray.

In Rome, Martin becomes a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he teaches Aramaic, Hebrew, palaeography, and Sacred Scripture. He also teaches theology, part-time, at Loyola University Chicago‘s John Felice Rome Center. He works as a translator for the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Ancient Oriental Churches Division of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity under Bea. He becomes acquainted with Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in 1961 and 1962. He accompanies Pope Paul VI on a trip to Jordan in January 1964. He resigned his position at the Pontifical Institute in June 1964.

In 1964, Martin requests a release from his vows and from the Jesuit Order. He receives a provisional release in May 1965 and a dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience on June 30, 1965. Even if dispensed from his religious vow of chastity, he remains under the obligation of chastity if still an ordained secular priest. He maintains that he remains a priest, saying that he had received a dispensation from Paul VI to that effect.

Martin moves to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver, while continuing to write. He co-founds an antiques firm and is active in communications and media for the rest of his life.

In 1967, Martin receives his first Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1970, he publishes the book The Encounter: Religion in Crisis, winning the Choice Book Award of the American Library Association. He then publishes Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, he becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1969, Martin receives a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976). In the book, he calls himself an exorcist, claiming he assisted in several exorcisms. According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty “wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.” Darraugh also says that Martin became “an iconic person in the paranormal world.”

Martin serves as religious editor for the National Review from 1972 to 1978. He is interviewed twice by William F. Buckley, Jr. for Firing Line on PBS. He is an editor for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Martin is a periodic guest on Art Bell‘s radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween.

Martin’s The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West is published in 1990. It is followed in 1996 by Windswept House: A Vatican Novel.

The Vatican restores Martin’s faculty to celebrate Mass in 1989, at his request. He is strongly supported by some Traditionalist Catholic sources and severely criticized by other sources, such as the National Catholic Reporter. He serves as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.

On July 27, 1999, Martin dies in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage, four days after his 78th birthday. It is caused by a fall in his Manhattan apartment. The documentary Hostage to the Devil claims that Martin says he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.

Martin’s funeral takes place in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West Orange, New Jersey, before burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne, New York.


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Beginning of the Battle of Kilmallock

The Battle of Kilmallock begins on July 25, 1922, in County Limerick, ending on August 5. It is one of the largest engagements of the Irish Civil War.

The battle consists of ten days of fighting in the countryside around Kilmallock in County Limerick, in which the National Army of the Irish Free State, advancing south from Limerick city, find their path blocked by anti-Treaty IRA troops, dug into a number of villages at Bruff, Bruree and Patrickswell. The fighting end with the retreat of the anti-Treaty fighters and the occupation of Kilmallock by Free State forces.

The prelude to the battle is the fall of Limerick city to Free State forces. The Republican forces in the city under Liam Deasy withdraw from their positions after a week of fighting and concentrate in Kilmallock and the nearby towns of Bruff and Bruree. The Free State forces, advancing south from the city, find their path blocked by the Republicans dug in at the three hilltop towns.

The National Army’s attempt to break through this position produces the only “line battle” of the war with the two sides facing each other along clear front-lines. The Kilmallock-Bruff-Bruree triangle sees some of the war’s most intense fighting.

Whereas in the fighting in Dublin, Limerick and Waterford, Free State troops equipped with artillery overcome Anti-Treaty resistance relatively easily, at Kilmallock they have a much harder time. The main reason for this is that the Free State troops, most of whom are new recruits, are facing some of the best of the IRA forces without an advantage in numbers or firepower. General Eoin O’Duffy complains of shortage of arms and ammunition. He estimates that while his forces have about 1,300 rifles, the Republicans could muster over 2,000. He is also critical of the quality of the troops at his disposal, whom he describes as, “a disgruntled, undisciplined and cowardly crowd.”

The Republicans know this and are confident of success. Nevertheless, the Republican commanders have their own issues with logistical support and lack of co-operation between forces from different counties. Deasy’s command includes Volunteers from counties Limerick itself, Cork and Kerry, all of whom have their own commanders. They have three improvised armoured cars, some mortars and heavy machine guns but no artillery.

O’Duffy draws up plans for the advance on Kilmallock with the assistance of his second-in-command Major General W. R. E. Murphy who had been a lieutenant colonel in World War I. His experience in the trenches has a major effect on his approach – pre-disposing him to cautious advances and use of trenches for cover.

The Republican forces have the better of the first clashes. On Sunday, July 23, Free State forces take Bruff and begin their advance on Kilmallock, but are twice beaten back by determined Republican resistance. The following day, the Republicans manage to retake Bruff in a counter-attack, taking 76 prisoners. As a result of this setback, O’Duffy calls off the advance for the time being and waits for reinforcements.

National Army forces quickly retake Bruff after reinforcements arrive. However, things get worse for the National Army as the week goes on. They make slow progress in taking the Republican strongpoints, and their casualties also mount. On Tuesday, July 25, a unit of the Dublin Guard under Tom Flood is ambushed on a narrow road. They fight their way clear, but only after losing four men. Three more Free State soldiers are killed two days later. On July 30, Major General Murphy launches an attack to take Bruree. The Dublin Guards attack the town from the southeast, supported by armoured cars and an 18-pound field gun. The Republicans hold out for five hours until Free State artillery is brought into action. At least 13 Free State soldiers and nine Anti-Treaty fighters are killed in the action and more are wounded before the Free State troops secure Bruree.

The Republican commander, Deasy, knows how important Bruree is to the defence of Kilmallock and draws up plans to recapture the town using three armoured cars, trench mortars and machine guns. On August 2, Republicans capture Patrickswell south of Limerick. The armoured cars then attack Bruree, taking Free State forces by surprise. One car attacks Commandant Flood’s headquarters at the Railway Hotel. The Commandant and his men manage to escape out the back of the building under the cover of Lewis gun fire. The second armoured car rams the front door of another post in the school house, which persuades the twenty-five troops inside to surrender.

However, when Free State reinforcements, along with armoured cars arrive, the Republican counter-attack stalls. The Free State reinforcements are led by Commandant General Seamus Hogan, who personally leads his forces, riding in the armoured car nicknamed “The Customs House.” Having failed to secure the surrender of the town, Republican forces retreat.

Having held Bruree against a Republican counterattack, Free State forces prepare to capture Kilmallock itself, but anticipate there will be heavy fighting. Republican Adjutant General Con Moloney comments on August 2, “Up to yesterday we have had the best of the operations there [the Kilmallock area]. There will, I fear, be a big change there now as the enemy have been reinforced very considerably.” In the 3rd Western Division area they have all but disbanded, unwilling to fight Free Staters, destroy roads, and now discouraged by the Catholic church.

On Thursday, August 3, a force of 2,000 Free State troops, backed up by armoured cars and artillery, advance on Kilmallock from Bruree, Dromin and Bulgaden. Seven hundred troops arrive the next day with an armoured car and a field gun. By Saturday, the town is surrounded by Free State forces. The Dublin Guard are also on hand to prevent Republican forces from escaping. Three miles away, Free State artillery is deployed and shells Republican forces on Kilmallock Hill and Quarry Hill. The two hills are soon controlled by Free State forces.

The National Army has, therefore, assembled sufficient force to smother resistance at Kilmallock. They are still, however, expecting hard fighting before they take the town. To their surprise, when the Free State troops enter the town, they encounter only light resistance from a Republican rearguard (volunteers from Cork). Most of the Republican troops have already abandoned their positions and retreated to Charleville.

They departed not because the Free State troops are stronger, but because they have been outflanked by Free State seaborne landings on the coasts of County Kerry and County Cork on August 2 and 8 respectively. The landings in Cork and Kerry force Commandant General Deasy to release units from this area to return home to their own areas. Although the landings in Cork occur after the retreat from Kilmallock, the subsequent loss of brigades from Cork adds to Commandant General Deasy’s problems. The final phase of the fighting in County Limerick comes when the Free State advance south is held up at Newcastle West. Another day of heavy fighting ensues in which the National Army troops have to bring up armoured cars and artillery to dislodge the Republicans, who reportedly lose up to 12 men before they retreat in the direction of Cork.

(Pictured: National Army troops lined up for a roll call during the Irish Civil War with local children casting an eye over the proceedings)


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Birth of Donal Donnelly, Theatre & Film Actor

Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, is born to Irish parents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on July 6, 1931. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he has a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lives in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States at various times, and his travels lead him to describe himself as “an itinerant Irish actor.”

Donnelly’s father, James, is a doctor from County Tyrone, and his mother, Nora O’Connor, is a teacher from County Kerry.

Donnelly is raised in Dublin where he attends Synge Street CBS, where he acts in school plays with Milo O’Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran, Bernard Frawley (Seattle Repertory Co.) and Jimmy Fitzsimons (brother of Maureen O’Hara), under the direction of elocution teacher, Ena Burke.

Donnelly gets his start in an amateur group calling itself the Globe Theatre Players. It is organised and run by Jim Fitzgerald and Monica Brophy. He then later tours with Anew McMaster‘s Irish repertory company before moving to England where he stars with Rita Tushingham in the film The Knack …and How to Get It.

Donnelly’s breakthrough role comes when he is cast as Gar Private in the world premiere of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! directed by Hilton Edwards for the Gate Theatre at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1964. The production subsequently transfers to Broadway where it plays for over 300 performances and establishes Donnelly and Patrick Bedford, who plays his alter-ego Gar Public, as formidable new talents to be reckoned with. They are jointly nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play in 1966.

Donnelly returns to Broadway a number of times, replacing Albert Finney in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1968, playing Milo Tindle in Anthony Shaffer‘s Sleuth and appearing as Frederick Treves opposite David Bowie as The Elephant Man. He also renews his relationship with Brian Friel, appearing in the world premieres of Volunteers at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 and Faith Healer with James Mason at the Longacre Theatre in New York City in 1979, as well as the Broadway premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa in 1991 and Translations in 1995.

For many years, Donnelly tours a one-man performance of the writings of George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Michael Voysey and entitled My Astonishing Self.

Donnelly’s film roles include Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather Part III and as Freddy Malins in John Huston‘s final work, The Dead, based on the short story by James Joyce, where he gains particular acclaim for his performance.

On television, Donnelly plays the lead role of Matthew Browne in the 1970s ITV sitcom Yes, Honestly, opposite Liza Goddard. But from the late 1950s onwards, he often appears in such British TV programs as The Avengers, Z-Cars and The Wednesday Play.

Donnelly is an acclaimed audiobook reader whose catalogue includes Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Voltaire‘s Philosophical Dictionary, and several audio versions of the works of James Joyce.

In 1968, Donnelly records an album of Irish songs, Take the Name of Donnelly, which is arranged, produced and conducted by Tony Meehan formerly of the Shadows.

Donnelly, who is a heavy smoker all his life, dies from cancer at the age of 78 in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Patricia ‘Patsy’ Porter, a former dancer he met working on Finian’s Rainbow, and two sons, Jonathan and Damian. Their only daughter, Maryanne, predeceases him after being killed in a riding accident. A brother, Michael Donnelly, is a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and Lord Mayor of Dublin(1990–91).

(Pictured: Publicity still of Donal Donnelly as Frederick Treves in the Broadway’s play The Elephant Man)


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Death of Emer Colleran, Microbiologist & Environmental Advocate

Emer Colleran, Irish microbiologist, academic and an environmental advocate, dies on June 30, 2018, at University Hospital Galway. She is professor of microbiology at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, one of Mary Robinson‘s nominees on the Council of State, and chairwoman of An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland.

Colleran, and her twin Noreen, are born in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, on October 12, 1945, to John and Josie Colleran. One of a family of five children, her father is a school principal and her mother, also a primary school teacher, dies when she is just 11 years old. She completes her secondary education at St. Louis secondary school in Kiltimagh. She spends a lot of time outdoors as a child, particularly fishing, which sparks her interest in the environment.

On entering higher education, Colleran has a grant from the Department of Education, which requires that she do her studies through the Irish language. Her first choice, Medicine, is not available in Irish so she chooses Science. She graduates with a first-class primary degree in Science at University College Galway (now National University of Ireland, Galway) in 1967.

Colleran specialises in anaerobic digestion as a postgraduate and in 1971 becomes a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Colleran lectures in biology at Athlone Regional Technical College (now Athlone Institute of Technology) and Galway Regional Technical College (now Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology) before her appointment as a lecturer in microbiology at NUI Galway in 1976. She is appointed Associate Professor of Microbiology by the Senate of the National University of Ireland in 1990. She is a member of the university’s governing authority for a number of years, but steps down in May 2000 in connection with the selection procedure for the new university president. In October of that year, she is appointed professor of microbiology and chair of the department at NUI Galway.

Colleran is the first director of the Environment Change Institute at NUI Galway set up under the Higher Education Authority‘s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions in 2000. In 2010, the Environmental Change Institute and the Martin Ryan Marine Research Institute are merged to form the current day Ryan Institute at NUI Galway.

In 1973, Colleran is elected to the committee of the Galway Association of An Taisce, part of a national voluntary organisation the aims of which are conservation in Ireland through education, publicity and positive action. She serves as membership secretary and then treasurer to the Galway branch before becoming chairman. In 1981, as chairman of the Galway branch, she hits back at claims from Galway County Council that An Taisce are “an anonymous group, wielding power unfairly.” She is involved in the compilation of a controversial planning report, published by An Taisce in 1983, which highlights abuse of planning laws by city and county councillors across Ireland, and in particular in counties Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and Louth.

Colleran serves as Environmental Officer for An Taisce before being elected National Chairman in 1987, the first time a chairman has come from one of the western county associations. She continues to use her position to campaign against misuse of planning laws, for a clamp down on pollution of rivers and lakes, and against a move to scrap An Foras Forbartha, a body that provides independent monitoring of pollution. During her three years as chairman, until May 1990, she is particularly involved in debates over local environmental and planning issues, in particular over gold mining in the west of Ireland, a proposed airport for Clifden, and the planned sewage treatment plant at Mutton Island, County Galway.

In 1991 plans are announced for a new visitor centre, to be located at Mullaghmore in The Burren. Colleran is among those who are part of an appeal, saying that while the plan for the national park is welcomed by An Taisce, they want the visitor centre to be located three or four miles from Mullaghmore.

President Mary Robinson appoints seven new members to her Council of State in February 1991, including Colleran. Other new members appointed at the time are Monica Barnes, Patricia O’Donovan, Quintan Oliver, Rosemarie Smith, Dónal Toolan and D. Kenneth Whitaker. The new Council of State represents a wide spectrum of Irish life and is widely welcomed, although Fine Gael is disappointed that its leader John Bruton is not included.

In 1991, Colleran is one of 15 people appointed to Taoiseach Charles Haughey‘s Green 2000 Advisory Group, to determine which problems will face the environment in the next century. The group is led by Dr. David Cabot, special advisor on environmental affairs.

Colleran is appointed a member of the National Heritage Council in 1995 by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins. In the same year the Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Eamon Gilmore, appoints her to the chair of the Sea Trout working group to oversee the implementation of recommendations to tackle a decline in sea trout stocks, particularly in the west of Ireland.

In 2003, Colleran is elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Colleran is recognised at the annual NUI Galway Alumni Awards in 2004 when she receives the award for Natural Science, sponsored by Seavite Bodycare Ltd., which acknowledges a graduate who has made an outstanding contribution in the field of natural science.


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Birth of Michael Noonan, Former Fine Gael Politician

Michael Noonan, former Fine Gael politician, is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on May 21, 1943. He has been a member of every Fine Gael cabinet since 1982, serving in the cabinets of Garret FitzGerald, John Bruton and Enda Kenny.

The son of a local school teacher, Noonan is raised in Loughill, County Limerick. He is educated at the local National School and St. Patrick’s Secondary School in Glin, before studying to be a primary school teacher at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin. He subsequently completes a BA and H.Dip. in English and Economics at University College Dublin (UCD). He begins to work as a secondary school teacher in Dublin. He develops an interest in politics from his mother, whose family had been heavily involved in Fine Gael at the local level in Limerick, and joins the Dublin branch of the party after graduating from university.

Having been involved in the local Fine Gael organisation in Limerick since the late 1960s, Noonan first holds political office in 1974, when he is elected as a member of Limerick County Council. Having built up a local profile he contests the 1981 Irish general election for the party and secures a seat in Limerick East. Upon taking his Dáil seat, he becomes a full-time politician, giving up his teaching post and resigning his seat on Limerick County Council. Though Fine Gael forms a coalition government with the Labour Party, as a first time Teachta Dála (TD), he remains on the backbenches. He serves as a TD from 1981 to 2020.

Noonan serves Minister for Justice from 1982 to 1986, Minister for Energy from January 1987 to March 1987, Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1986 to 1987, Minister for Health from 1994 to 1997, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of Fine Gael from 2001 to 2002, and Minister for Finance from 2011 to 2017.

In May 2017, Noonan announces he will be stepping down as Minister for Finance in the coming weeks when a new Taoiseach was appointed, and as a member of the Dáil at the next general election.

Noonan marries Florence Knightley, a native of Castlemaine, County Kerry and a primary school teacher, in 1969. They have three sons (Tim, John and Michael) and two daughters (Orla and Deirdre). In May 2010, Noonan appears on RTÉ‘s The Frontline to talk about his wife’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Florence Noonan dies on February 23, 2012 of pneumonia.


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Birth of Timothy McCarthy Downing, Solicitor & Politician

Timothy McCarthy Downing, solicitor and an Irish Liberal Party and Home Rule League politician, is born at Kenmare, County Kerry, on May 11, 1814.

Downing is the second son of Eugene Downing, a local merchant, and his wife, Helena, daughter of Timothy McCarthy of Kilfadamore, County Kerry. They have two other sons and two daughters. He is apprenticed in 1830 to his elder brother, Francis Henry, who practises as a solicitor at Killarney. Once admitted as a solicitor himself in 1836, he moves to Skibbereen, County Cork, where he practises until the mid-1860s, making from his practice a large fortune. By the mid-1870s he owns 4,067 acres in Cork and Kerry valued at £1,413.

Downing is prominent locally in public affairs, supporting the repeal campaign of Daniel O’Connell and the temperance campaign of Fr. Theobald Mathew. He is the first chairman of Skibbereen town commissioners, from 1862 to 1879. He later helps James Stephens and Michael Doheny escape to France in 1849. After Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and other members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society are arrested on December 5, 1858, he acts as their solicitor. His chief clerk, Mortimer Moynahan, a member of the society, unwittingly takes on as an assistant a man who proves to be an informer.

Downing involves himself in the National Association of Ireland, the political pressure group formed by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, and succeeds in getting tenant-right added to its demands in March 1865. He is elected as one of the two MPs for County Cork on November 30, 1868, and is reelected without a contest on February 5, 1874. Nominally a liberal, he draws his main support from the Catholic bishops and most of the parish clergy and, more significantly, from the tenant farmer class. The farmers’ interests he vigorously pursues in parliament and outside.

After the passing of William Ewart Gladstone‘s first land act, Downing plays a prominent part in the formation of the Home Rule League under the leadership of Isaac Butt. He is always a moderate on the home-rule issue – he opposes the pledging of home-rule MPs always to act together and later the obstructive tactics of fellow home-rulers Joseph Gillis Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell. He is one of the nine members of the standing committee of Butt’s Irish Parliamentary Party (1874–79) and proves a stalwart of Butt particularly in disputes with Parnell. It is he who draws to the attention of the House of Commons the condition of tenants on the Buckley estate in the foothills of the Galtee Mountains at Skeheenarinky in County Tipperary in March 1877. In Butt’s absence Downing introduces an Irish land tenure bill on February 6, 1878, which is, however, quickly defeated.

Downing dies January 10, 1879, at his residence, Prospect House, Skibbereen, a deputy lieutenant of County Cork. The cortège that follows his body to the Old Caheragh Graveyard, Skibbereen, for burial is said to be four miles long. In Emmet Larkin‘s judgement, “it was not altogether unlikely, if he had survived, that he would have eventually succeeded Butt as chairman of the Irish party.”

In 1837, Downing marries Jane, youngest daughter of Daniel McCarthy of Ave Hill, Dromore, County Cork, and with her has four sons and three daughters. His younger brother, Washington, is a parliamentary reporter and later the Rome correspondent for The Daily News of London, and husband of Mary McCarthy Downing.

(From: “Downing, Timothy McCarthy” by C.J. Woods, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Alan Dukes, Former Fine Gael Politician

Alan Martin Dukes, former Fine Gael politician, is born in Drimnagh, Dublin, on April 20, 1945. He holds several senior government positions and serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1981 to 2002. He is one of the few TDs to be appointed a minister on their first day in the Dáil.

His father, James F. Dukes, is originally from Tralee, County Kerry, and is a senior civil servant and the founding chairman and chief executive of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), while his mother is from near Ballina, County Mayo.

The Dukes family originally comes from the north of England. His grandfather serves with the Royal Engineers in World War I and settles in County Cork and then County Kerry afterward where he works with the Post Office creating Ireland’s telephone network.

Dukes is educated by the Christian Brothers at Coláiste Mhuire, Dublin, and is offered several scholarships for third level on graduation, including one for the Irish language. His interest in the Irish language continues to this day, and he regularly appears on Irish-language television programmes.

On leaving school he attends University College Dublin (UCD), where he captains the fencing team to its first-ever Intervarsity title.

Dukes becomes an economist with the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) in Dublin in 1969. After Ireland joins the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, he moves to Brussels where he is part of the IFA delegation. In this role, he is influential in framing Ireland’s contribution to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). He is appointed as chief of staff to Ireland’s EEC commissioner Richard Burke, a former Fine Gael politician.

In the 1979 European Parliament election, Dukes stands as a Fine Gael candidate in the Munster constituency. He has strong support among the farming community, but the entry of T. J. Maher, a former president of the IFA, as an independent candidate hurts his chances of election. Maher tops the poll.

He stands again for Fine Gael at the 1981 Irish general election in the expanded Kildare constituency, where he wins a seat in the 22nd Dáil. On his first day in the Dáil, he is appointed Minister for Agriculture by the Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, becoming one of only eight TDs so appointed. He represents Kildare for 21 years.

This minority Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition government collapses in February 1982 on the budget but returns to power with a working majority in December 1982. Dukes is again appointed to cabinet, becoming Minister for Finance less than two years into his Dáil career.

He faces a difficult task as finance minister. Ireland is heavily in debt while unemployment and emigration are high. Many of Fine Gael’s plans are deferred while the Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition disagrees on how to solve the economic crisis. The challenge of addressing the national finances is made difficult by electoral arithmetic and a lack of support from the opposition Fianna Fáil party led by Charles Haughey. He remains in the Department of Finance until a reshuffle in February 1986 when he is appointed Minister for Justice.

Fine Gael fails to be returned to government at the 1987 Irish general election and loses 19 of its 70 seats, mostly to the new Progressive Democrats. Outgoing Taoiseach and leader Garret FitzGerald steps down and Dukes is elected leader of Fine Gael, becoming Leader of the Opposition.

This is a difficult time for the country. Haughey’s Fianna Fáil runs on promises to increase spending and government services, and attacking the cutbacks favoured by Fine Gael. However, on taking office, the new Taoiseach and his finance minister Ray MacSharry immediately draw up a set of cutbacks including a spate of ward and hospital closures. This presents a political opportunity for the opposition to attack the government.

However, while addressing a meeting of the Tallaght Chamber of Commerce, Dukes announces, in what becomes known as the Tallaght Strategy that: “When the government is moving in the right direction, I will not oppose the central thrust of its policy. If it is going in the right direction, I do not believe that it should be deviated from its course, or tripped up on macro-economic issues.”

This represents a major departure in Irish politics whereby Fine Gael will vote with the minority Fianna Fáil Government if it adopts Fine Gael’s economic policies for revitalising the economy. The consequences of this statement are huge. The Haughey government is able to take severe corrective steps to restructure the economy and lay the foundations for the economic boom of the nineties. However, at a snap election in 1989, Dukes does not receive electoral credit for this approach, and the party only makes minor gains, gaining four seats. The outcome is the first-ever coalition government for Fianna Fáil, whose junior partner is the Progressive Democrats led by former Fianna Fáil TD Desmond O’Malley.

The party’s failure to make significant gains in 1989 leaves some Fine Gael TDs with a desire for a change at the top of the party. Their opportunity comes in the wake of the historic 1990 Irish presidential election. Fine Gael chooses Austin Currie TD as their candidate. He had been a leading member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) movement in the 1960s and had been a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) before moving south.

Initially, Fianna Fáil’s Brian Lenihan Snr is the favourite to win. However, after several controversies arise, relating to the brief Fianna Fáil administration of 1982, and Lenihan’s dismissal as Minister for Defence midway through the campaign, the Labour Party’s Mary Robinson emerges victorious. To many in Fine Gael, the humiliation of finishing third is too much to bear and a campaign is launched against Dukes’ leadership. He is subsequently replaced as party leader by John Bruton.

Bruton brings Dukes back to the front bench in September 1992, shortly before the November 1992 Irish general election. In February 1994, Dukes becomes involved in a failed attempt to oust Bruton as leader and subsequently resigns from the front bench. Bruton becomes Taoiseach in December 1994 and Dukes is not appointed to cabinet at the formation of the government.

In December 1996, Dukes returns as Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications following the resignation of Michael Lowry. At the 1997 Irish general election, he tops the poll in the new Kildare South constituency, but Fine Gael loses office. He becomes Chairman of the Irish Council of the European Movement. In this position, he is very involved in advising many of the Eastern European countries who are then applying to join the European Union.

In 2001, Dukes backs Michael Noonan in his successful bid to become leader of Fine Gael.

After 21 years, Dukes loses his Dáil seat at the 2002 Irish general election. This contest sees many high-profile casualties for Fine Gael, including Deputy Leader Jim Mitchell, former deputy leader Nora Owen and others. Many local commentators feel that Dukes’ loss is due to a lack of attention to local issues, as he is highly involved in European projects and has always enjoyed a national profile.

He retires from frontline politics in 2002 and is subsequently appointed Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs. He remains active within Fine Gael and serves several terms as the party’s vice-president. From 2001 to 2011, he is President of the Alliance française in Dublin, and in June 2004, the French Government appoints him an Officer of the Legion of Honour. In April 2004, he is awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

In December 2008, Dukes is appointed by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan Jnr as a public interest director on the board of Anglo Irish Bank. The bank is subsequently nationalised, and he serves on the board until the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) is liquidated in 2013.

From 2011 to 2013, Dukes serves as chairman of the Board of Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. In 2011, he founds the think tank Asia Matters, which inks an agreement with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries in May 2019.

Dukes has lived in Kildare since first being elected to represent the Kildare constituency in 1981. His wife Fionnuala (née Corcoran) is a former local politician and serves as a member of Kildare County Council from 1999 until her retirement in 2009. She serves as Cathaoirleach of the council from 2006 to 2007, becoming only the second woman to hold the position in the body’s one-hundred-year history. They have two daughters.


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Birth of Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Diplomat, Poet & Memoirist

Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Irish civil service diplomat, writer of Modernist poetry in the Dingle Peninsula dialect of Munster Irish, a memoirist, and a highly important figure within modern literature in Irish, is born Máire MacEntee in Dublin on April 4, 1922. Along with Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máirtín Ó Direáin, she is, in the words of Louis de Paor, “one of a trinity of poets who revolutionised Irish language poetry in the 1940s and 50s.” She has a lifelong passion for the Irish language and is one of the leading authorities on Munster Irish.

Mhac an tSaoi’s father, Seán MacEntee, is born in Belfast and is a veteran of the Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising and the subsequent Irish War of Independence, and of the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. He is also a founding member of Fianna Fáil, a long-serving TD and Tánaiste in the Dáil. Her mother, Margaret Browne (or de Brún) of County Tipperary, is also an Irish republican and a distinguished Celticist who teaches courses in Irish literature in the Irish language at Alexandra College and University College Dublin (UCD).

Mhac an tSaoi is influenced by her stays in the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry with her uncle, Monsignor De Brún, at his parish of Dún Chaoin. Monsignor de Brún, similarly to his sister, is a distinguished linguist and Celticist, the literary translator of Homer, Dante Alighieri, Sophocles, and Jean Racine into Modern Irish, “and one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”

Mhac an tSaoi studies Modern Languages and Celtic Studies at UCD, before going to further research at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and at the University of Paris. She writes the famous work of Christian poetry in Munster Irish, Oíche Nollag (“Christmas Eve”), when she is only 15-years of age.

Mhac an tSaoi spends two years studying in post-war Paris (1945–47) before joining the Irish diplomatic service and is working at the Irish embassy in Madrid when she commits herself to writing poetry in Irish following her discovery of the works of Federico García Lorca.

She remains a prolific poet and is credited, along with Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máirtín Ó Direáin, with reintroducing literary modernism into Irish literature in the Irish language, where it had been dormant since the 1916 execution of Patrick Pearse, in the years and decades following World War II. Her poetry draws on the vernacular spoken by the native Irish speakers of the Munster Gaeltacht of West Kerry during the first half of the twentieth century. Formally, she draws on the song metres of the oral tradition and on older models from the earlier literary tradition. In later work, she explores looser verse forms but continues to draw on the remembered dialect of Dún Chaoin and on a scholarly knowledge of the older literature.

Mhac an tSaoi is elected to Aosdána in 1996 but resigns in 1997 after Francis Stuart is elevated to the position of Saoi. She had voted against Stuart because of his role as an Abwehr spy and in radio propaganda broadcasts from Nazi Germany aimed at neutral Ireland during World War II.

In 2001, she publishes an award-winning novel A Bhean Óg Ón… about the relationship between the 17th-century County Kerry poet and Irish clan chief Piaras Feiritéar and Meg Russell, the woman for whom he composed some of the greatest works of love poetry ever written in the Irish language.

Her poems Jack and An Bhean Óg Ón are both featured on the Leaving Certificate Irish course, at both Higher and Ordinary Levels, from 2006 to 2010. Her literary translation of Rainer Maria Rilke‘s Duino Elegies from Austrian German into the Irish language is published in 2013.

Mhac an tSaoi marries Irish politician, writer, and historian Conor Cruise O’Brien in a Roman Catholic wedding Mass in Dublin in 1962. This makes her the stepmother to O’Brien’s children from his 1939 civil marriage. Her mother is deeply embarrassed by the exposure of the relationship and staunchly opposes the match, as she has long been a close friend of O’Brien’s Presbyterian first wife. Despite their subsequent marriage, the exposure of their extramarital relationship ends Mhac an tSaoi’s diplomatic and civil service career. They later adopted two children, Patrick and Margaret.

She then lives with her husband in New York City, where he becomes a professor at New York University (NYU) after the Congo Crisis destroys O’Brien’s diplomatic career. He is long blamed by the United Nations for the escalation of the Congo Crisis.

Mhac an tSaoi and her husband, who is then serving as Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at NYU, are both staunchly opposed to the Vietnam War. They are both arrested by the New York City Police Department (NYPD), along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg, during an allegedly violent protest outside a United States military induction centre in New York City on December 5, 1967. Afterward, during an interview with The New York Times, she accuses the NYPD of using excessive force both during and after her husband’s arrest.

She later returns with O’Brien to live in Dublin, where she attends another protest rally against the Vietnam War along O’Connell Street in 1969.

Mhac an tSaoi dies peacefully at the age of 99 on October 16, 2021, at home where she has been cared for by her daughter Margaret.