Brendan Maher, an Irish hurler who plays for club side Borris–Ileigh and previously at inter-county level with the Tipperary senior hurling team, is born on January 5, 1989, at Borrisoleigh, County Tipperary. Regarded as one of the great talents of his generation, Maher enjoys a 13-season career with the Tipperary senior hurling team, wins three All-Stars and is a Hurler of the Year nominee in 2010. He wins eight major trophies in his inter-county career, comprising three All-Ireland Championships, captaining the team in 2016, and five Munster Championships. A versatile player who switches between attacking and defensive positions, he makes a combined 124 league and championship appearances.
Maher first comes to prominence as a hurler with St. Joseph’s College in Borrisoleigh. He plays in every grade before eventually joining the senior hurling team and lines out in several Harty Cup campaigns.
Maher is added to the Munster team in advance of the 2012 Inter-Provincial Hurling Championship. He makes his first appearance for the team on February 19, 2012, when he lines out at left wing-forward in a 3–14 to 1–16 defeat by Leinster. On March 3, 2013, he lines out at midfield when Munster qualifies to play Connacht in the 2013 Inter-Provincial Hurling Championship final. He ends the game with a Railway Cup medal following the 1–22 to 0–15 victory. On December 15, 2016, he wins a second Railway Cup medal after captaining the team from midfield in a 2–20 to 2–16 defeat of Leinster in the final.
On October 19, 2011, Maher is named on the Ireland squad for the Shinty-Hurling International Series. On October 29, 2011, he lines out at centre-forward when Ireland defeats Scotland on an aggregate scoreline of 3–25 to 3–19 following a two-game series. He is selected for the Ireland team for the second time in his career on October 22, 2013. He claims a second winners’ medal from right wing-forward following Ireland’s 5–27 to 2–26 aggregate defeat of Scotland on November 2, 2013.
In October 2022, Maher is announced as Offaly senior hurling team performance coach under the management of Johnny Kelly.
Clean-up operations are underway around Ireland on Wednesday, December 30, 2015, in the wake of Storm Frank, which causes widespread flooding following its landfall in western areas on Tuesday, December 29. Thousands of households and businesses are left without electricity in many areas of the country.
A Met Éireann status orange wind warning is lifted at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday although the forecasts caution that severe winds of 65-80 km/h and gusts of up 130 km/h are still expected. While the heaviest rainfall from the storm falls overnight, many rivers and lakes have yet to peak meaning further flooding is possible.
According to an ESB Networks spokesman, 7,500 homes are without power in the afternoon, down from the overnight total of 13,000. He says repair crews are working to restore power to those cut off. The biggest single outage overnight is around Bandon and Fermoy in County Cork where 4,000 homes are without power, although it has been restored to almost all homes by the afternoon of December 30.
At 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the worst affected areas are County Wicklow with 1,200 houses without power, Macroom in County Cork where 600 are without power and Athlone where 500 homes are cut off. Around 500 homes in Naas, County Kildare, are without power as are 350 houses in Skerries in north County Dublin. It is hoped that power will be restored to all customers by the evening.
County Cork appears to be the worst affected by the storm where 60 mms (almost three inches) of rain falls since the morning of December 29. The threat of further flooding in Cork remains as the ESB increases the flow of water through the Inniscarra Dam to 250 cumecs (cubic metres per second) between 9:00 a.m. and midday which leads to increased flooding downstream. This is higher than the level of flow (180 cumecs) the previous and between December 6 and 12 along the River Lee following Storm Desmond.
Cork County manager Tim Lucey says there has been “extensive flooding” across a range of areas, but that Midleton and Bandon are worst hit with some 90 properties affected in each of the towns. He tells RTÉ Radio that one positive is the fact flood defences in Mallow and Fermoy have done their job. He notes that some five feet of water has built up behind a flood barrier in Mallow and this indicates the damage that could have been done to the town.
South Galway bears the brunt of flooding in the west, with river gauges expected to rise further over the coming days. Overnight rainfall is not as heavy as anticipated in the west, but several properties succumb to the waters. Up to 30 families in the south Galway area are forced to stay with relatives, with several being accommodated in hotels by Galway County Council, as floodwaters cut off access routes to their homes.
In Mayo, the area around the Neale remains underwater and a number of minor roads and thousands of acres of farmland are also affected. With rain continuing to fall across the west, conditions are expected to remain critical over the next few days.
The N11 between Rosslare and Dublin, the N25 from Cork to Waterford, the N71 between Cork and Killarney and the N4 between Dublin and Sligo all have diversions in place. The N25 is closed overnight between Killeagh and Castlemartyr in County Cork due to flooding. The N71 Cork/Bandon Road is also closed overnight at the viaduct due to flooding. There is severe flooding on the N40 South Ring Rd. at J6 Kinsale, particularly on the westbound off-ramp. The N11 Dublin/Wexford Road is impassable through Enniscorthy and also at Kyle’s Cross near Oylegate. The N4 is closed eastbound at Ballynafid in County Westmeath due to flooding. There are also several road closures in Kerry, Waterford and Tipperary.
Midleton is also hit by severe flooding as water levels in the Owenacurra River rise dramatically with up to 30 families having to be evacuated from their homes. Macroom in mid-Cork is also flooded for the first time during the year. Bandon is put on red alert by Cork County Council’s early warning system. Traders and residents are told to take all measures necessary to protect their property and stock. Locals stay up all night preparing the town for the latest round of flooding. Nevertheless, some 20 businesses in Bandon are flooded for the second time in a month after waters start to come up shores and gutters in the town as water levels in the River Bandon rise overnight.
The River Slaney burst its banks in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, causing widespread flooding in the town. Several cars have to be abandoned. High tide in Enniscorthy occurs around 10:30 a.m. on December 30.
The ESB says the flow of water through Parteen Weir, which regulates water flow through Ardnacrusha power plant, will remain at 440 (cubic metres per second) on December 30 and that the situation will be reviewed again the following day. “The levels in Lough Derg may reach 2009 levels in the coming days and, as a result, the flow through Parteen Weir may increase to 2009 levels (up to 500 cumecs) in the coming days,” it says.
Clare County Council says water levels on the lower River Shannon at Springfield, Clonlara, have increased by 5-10cm in the last 24 hours and are some 20cm below a peak level recorded on December 13th. It says the Mulkear River in County Limerick, which enters the River Shannon south of Annacotty, is currently in flood and is contributing to increased water levels at Springfield. Council staff are assisted by the Fire Service and Defence Forces at Springfield in their pumping operations and transporting residents of some 12 homes isolated by floodwaters.
Fianna Fáil urges TaoiseachEnda Kenny to call an emergency Cabinet meeting to address the fallout from the storm. The party’s environment spokesman, Barry Cowen, says many communities felt neglected as further significant damage was inflicted on homes and businesses by the rainfall and winds brought by Storm Frank. “The scenes that we are witnessing in communities impacted by the latest storm are truly heart-breaking,” he says. “People feel neglected by the Government. It’s astonishing that the Taoiseach has decided not to interrupt his Christmas holidays in light of the devastation caused by Storm Frank.”
The Government’s National Coordination Group on Severe Weather meets in Dublin on December 30. Sinn FéinMEPLiadh Ní Riada says the Government has displayed “ineptitude in preparing flood defences” and that “more hollow promises” from the Coalition are no substitute for action. “The risk of flooding is increasing and will continue to increase. People across this island need to know that our political leaders have a plan to prevent this happening in the future,” she says.
(From: “Storm Frank causes floods, closes roads and cuts power to thousands” by Ronan McGreevy, Th Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, December 30, 2015 | Pictured: Water flows through buildings and down the street in Graignamanagh, Co Kilkenny on Tuesday night by Paul B via Twitter)
Clancy begins singing with his brothers, Paddy and Tom Clancy, at fund-raising events for the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Guthrie benefits. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, begin recording on Paddy Clancy’s Tradition Records label in the late 1950s. Liam plays guitar in addition to singing and also records several solo albums. They record their seminal The Rising of the Moon album in 1959. There are international tours, which include performances at Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. The quartet records numerous albums for Columbia Records and enjoys great success during the 1960s folk revival. In 1964, thirty percent of all albums sold in Ireland are Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem records.
After The Clancy Brothers split up, Liam has a solo career in Canada. In 1975, he is booked to play a festival in Cleveland, Ohio, where Tommy Makem is also playing. The two play a set together and form the group Makem and Clancy, performing in numerous concerts and recording several albums together until 1988. The original Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem line-up also get back together in the 1980s for a reunion tour and album.
In later life, Liam maintains a solo career accompanied by musicians Paul Grant and Kevin Evans, while also engaging in other pursuits. In 2001, Clancy publishes a memoir titled The Mountain of the Women. He is also in No Direction Home, the 2005 Bob Dylan documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. In 2006, Clancy is profiled in a two-hour documentary titled The Legend of Liam Clancy, produced by Anna Rodgers and John Murray with Crossing the Line Films, which wins the award for best series at the Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin. His final album, The Wheels of Life, is released in 2009. It includes duets with Mary Black and Gemma Hayes as well as songs by Tom Paxton and Donovan.
Liam Clancy dies from pulmonary fibrosis on December 4, 2009, in Bon Secours Hospital, Cork. He is buried in the new cemetery in An Rinn, County Waterford, where he spent the last number of years of his life, owning a successful recording studio.
Luby is born in Dublin on January 16, 1822, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman from Templemore, County Tipperary, his mother being a Catholic. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin where he studies law and puts in the necessary number of terms in London and Dublin where he acquires a reputation as a scholar and takes his degree. He goes on to teach at the college for a time.
In 1851 Luby travels to France, where he hopes to join the French Foreign Legion to learn infantry tactics but finds the recruiting temporarily suspended. From France he goes to Australia for a year before returning to Ireland. From the end of 1855 he edits the Tribune newspaper founded by John E. Pigot who had been a member of The Nation group. During this time, he remains in touch with the small group of ’49 men including Philip Gray and attempts to start a new revolutionary movement. Luby’s views on social issues grow more conservative after 1848 which he makes clear to James Stephens whom he meets in 1856.
In the autumn of 1857 Owen Considine arrives with a message signed by four Irish exiles in the United States, two of whom are John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny. The message conveys the confidence they have in Stephens and asks him to establish an organisation in Ireland to win national independence. Considine also carries a private letter from O’Mahony to Stephens which is a warning, and which is overlooked by Luby and Stephens at the time. Both believe that there is a strong organisation behind the letter, only later to find it is rather a number of loosely linked groups. On December 23, Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to America with his reply which is disguised as a business letter dated and addressed from Paris. In his reply, Stephen’s outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America.
On March 17, 1858, Denieffe arrives in Dublin with the acceptance of Stephens’s terms by the New York Committee and the eighty pounds. On that very evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood is established in Peter Langan’s timberyard in Lombard Street.
In mid-1863 Stephens informs his colleagues he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of the Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Luby are Charles J. Kickham and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor have charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered. Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police at Dublin Castle, has an informer within the offices of the Irish People who supplies him with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of the Irish People on Thursday, September 15, followed by the arrests of Luby, O’Leary and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught with the support of Fenian prison warders. The last number of the paper is dated September 16, 1865.
After his arrest and the suppression of the Irish People, Luby is sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. He is released in January 1871, but is compelled to remain away from Ireland until the expiration of his sentence.
Upon his release Luby goes first to the Continent and later settles in New York City. He lectures all over the country for years and writes for a number of Irish newspapers on political topics. At the memorial meeting on the death of John Mitchel, he delivers the principal address in Madison Square Garden.
Thomas Clarke Luby dies at 109½ Oak Street, Jersey City, New Jersey of paralysis, on November 29, 1901, and is buried in a grave shared with his wife in Bayview Cemetery in Jersey City. His epitaph reads: “Thomas Clarke Luby 1822–1901 He devoted his life to love of Ireland and quest of truth.”
Hickie attends the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1882 to 1885. He is commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Royal Fusiliers at Gibraltar, in 1885 and serves with them for thirteen years in the Mediterranean, Egypt, and India, during which time he is promoted to captain on November 18, 1892. In 1899 he graduates as captain at the Staff College, Camberley, and is selected when the Second Boer War breaks out as a Special Service Officer in which capacity he acts in various positions of authority and command. He leaves Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900 and is promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on March 17, 1900. He is subsequently in command of a corps until eventually at the end of 1900 he is given command of an independent column of all arms. He holds this position for eighteen months. He serves with distinction at the Battle of Bothaville in November 1900 and receives the brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel on November 29, 1900. He serves in South Africa throughout the war, which ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he leaves Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the 2nd battalion Royal Fusiliers, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion is posted to Aldershot Garrison. In December 1902 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).
After the end of the war in South Africa there follows various staff appointments, the first from December 1902 as deputy-assistant adjutant general for district staff in the Cork district. In 1907 Hickie is back in regimental service in Dublin and Mullingar with the 1st Royal Fusiliers, where he is in command of the regiment for the last two years. From 1909 to 1912 is appointed to the Staff of the 8th Infantry Division in Cork where for four years he is well known in the hunting field and on the polo ground. In May 1912, he is promoted to colonel and becomes Quartermaster General of the Irish Command at Royal Hospital Kilmainham for which he is appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
When war is declared, the Staff of the Irish Command becomes automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Hickie is promoted to brigadier general and, as part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, takes charge of the Adjutant and Quartermaster-General’s Department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the First Battle of the Marne. In mid-September 1914, he relieves one of the brigadiers in the fighting line as commander of the 13th Brigade (5th Infantry Division) and then commands the 53rd Brigade (18th Infantry Division) until December 1915, when he is ordered home to assume command of the 16th (Irish) Division at Blackburn.
Promoted to major general, Hickie takes over from Lieutenant General Sir Lawrence Parsons. It is politically a highly sensitive appointment which requires the professionalism and political awareness he, fortunately, possesses as the division is formed around a core of Irish National Volunteers in response to Edward Carson‘s Ulster Volunteers. He is much more diplomatic and tactful than his predecessors and speaks of the pride which his new command gives him but does not hesitate to make sweeping changes amongst the senior officers of the Irish Division. After putting the division through intensive training, it leaves under Irish command of which each man takes personal pride. It arrives in December 1915.
In the next two years and four months during which Hickie commands the 16th (Irish) Division, it earns a reputation for aggression and élan and wins many memorials and mentions for bravery in the engagements during the 1916 Battle of Guillemont and the capture of Ginchy, both of which form part of the Battle of the Somme, then during the Battle of Messines, the Third Battle of Ypres and in attacks near Bullecourt in the Battle of Cambrai offensive in November 1917.
During this period the Division makes considerable progress in developing its operational techniques but at a price in losses. The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits, due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland, is successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.
In February 1918, Hickie is invalided home on temporary sick leave, but when in the hospital the German spring offensive begins on March 21, with the result that after his division moves under the command of General Hubert Gough it is practically wiped out and ceases to exist as a division. Although promised a new command, this does not happen before the Armistice in November. He typifies the army’s better divisional commanders, is articulate, intelligent and is competent and resourceful during the BEF’s difficult period 1916–17, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918. He is advanced to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1918.
Hickie retires from the army in 1922, when the six Irish line infantry regiments that have their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new Irish Free State are all disbanded. He identifies himself strongly with the Home Rule Act and says that its scrapping is a disaster and is equally outspoken in condemning the activities of the Black and Tans. In 1925, he is elected as a member of Seanad Éireann, the Irish Free State Senate.
Hickie holds his seat until the Seanad is dissolved in 1936, to be replaced by Seanad Éireann in 1937. He is President of the Area Council (Southern Ireland) of the Royal British Legion from 1925 to 1948. He never marries.
Hickie dies on November 3, 1950, in Dublin and is buried in Terryglass, County Tipperary.
Shanahan is involved in the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916. This leads to him having legal difficulties over the licence of his public house. He consults the lawyer and politician Tim Healy who comments:
“I had with me today a solicitor with his client, a Dublin publican named Phil Shanahan, whose licence is being opposed, and whose house was closed by the military because he was in Jacob’s during Easter week. I was astonished at the type of man – about 40 years of age, jolly and respectable. He said he ‘rose out’ to have a ‘crack at the English’ and seemed not at all concerned at the question of success or failure. He was a Tipperary hurler in the old days. For such a man to join the Rebellion and sacrifice the splendid trade he enjoyed makes one think there are disinterested Nationalists to be found. I thought a publican was the last man in the world to join a rising! Alfred Byrne, MP, was with him, and is bitter against the Party. I think I can save Shanahan’s property.”
Shanahan is elected for Dublin Harbour at the 1918 Irish general election, defeating Alfred Byrne. Like other Sinn Féin MPs, he does not take his seat at Westminster, but becomes a member of the revolutionary Dáil. He represents Dublin Harbour in the First Dáil from 1919 to 1921. He is arrested and detained in custody by the British government in April 1920 but is released in time to attend the next meeting of the Dáil on June 29, 1920.
During the Irish War of Independence, Billy Dunleavy recalls, “The IRA were the best men we ever had at that time. The Tans used to go around in the tenders with a wire over the top and if it was going by up there in Talbot Street they’d (IRA) say, ‘Get out of the way, quick!’ and they’d throw a hand grenade into the car. Now Phil Shanahan, he owned a pub over there on the corner, he was a great man and he used to hide them after they’d been out on a job. He had cellars and all the IRA men used to go there and hide their stuff.”
Flannery edits the Dominican bi-monthly journal entitled Doctrine and Life from 1958 to 1988, while at St. Saviour’s Priory, Dublin, where he also serves as prior from 1957 to 1960. He also edits the Religious Life Review. During and after the Second Vatican Council he makes available in English all the documents from the event.
From August 1969, Flannery is a member of the executive committee of the Northern Relief Coordination Committee, raising funds on behalf of the families of those interned without trial in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s.
Flannery embodies the post-Vatican II conception of the priest as a social catalyst engaged by the gospel, closer to his flock than to the clerical hierarchy. He has a great gift for friendship, is indefatigably interested in people, and courts religious affairs commentators and journalists at a time when the hierarchy ignores them, magnifying his influence.
Flannery dies of a heart attack on October 21, 2008, at Kiltipper Woods Care Centre, Dublin. Following a funeral mass at St. Saviour’s Priory, he is buried in the Dominican plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, on October 24, 2008.
Rosenstock’s father, George, is a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, who serves as a medical officer with the Wehrmacht in World War II. His mother is a nurse from County Galway. He is the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He is educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, County Dublin.
Rosenstock works for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he works with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North-South body which promotes the Irish language.
Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books.
Rosenstock also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) wins the Children’s Books Judges’ Special Prize in 2015.
Rosenstock appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press). He gives the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015.
Rosenstock has worked with American photographer Ron Rosenstock, Indian Photographer Debiprasad Mukherjee, Greek photographer Kon Markogiannis, Dublin photographer Jason Symes, French photographer Jean-Pierre Favreau and many more to create the new guise of a photo-haiku (or a haiga) – the interplay of visual aesthetic and literature.
Ryan attributes to Pearse the saying “[G]ive me a hundred men and I will free Ireland!” He becomes part of a group of former students lodging in St. Enda’s while they go to university who join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). They meet in a safe house at Rathfarnham in 1911. The men take the tram from Rathfarnham to Nelson’s Pillar in central Dublin. Pearse once told his friend, “Let them talk! I am the most dangerous revolutionary of the whole lot of them!” In 1911, the Dungannon Clubs revive the Volunteers Militia movement. These clubs are not initially successful in Dublin but are more so in Belfast amongst nationalists. One of the northern members is the Dubliner Oscar Traynor, in his youth a professional footballer with Belfast Celtic F.C., later a war hero and later again a politician and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
Eoin MacNeill is appointed leader of the Irish Volunteers. Ryan writes that Pearse, a risk-taker and idealist, tells him MacNeill is “too tactful.” MacNeill is prepared to entertain the Irish Parliamentary Party with negotiations. Ryan quotes Pearse as saying, “[MacNeill] has the reputation of being tactful, but his tact consists in bowing to the will of the Redmondites every time. He never makes a fight except when they assail his personal honour, when he bridles up at once… very delicate position… he is weak, hopelessly weak.”
Pearse tells Ryan that MacNeill is “a Grattan come to life again.” Henry Grattan is a constitutional orator and MP in the Protestant-only 18th-century Irish House of Commons, but one of those who fiercely opposes the notorious Acts of Union 1800, secured by massive bribery (which is then repaid out of Irish taxes), making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. Moreover, MacNeill is an “inconclusive ditherer.” He wants the Irish Volunteers to be apolitical.
The Easter Rising is preceded by the revelation of the “Castle Document,” a plan by the British government to arrest the leaders of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army and other radicals. Ryan claims that this document, presented to MacNeill on the Wednesday before the Rising and said to have been stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, is a forgery. Some claim that it is concocted by Joseph Plunkett with the implicit approval of Catholic Archbishop Cullen of Dublin, a sympathiser with Dublin Castle and Redmond’s war stratagem. “Forgery is a strong word,” Ryan says, “but that in its final form the document was a forgery no doubt can exist whatever.” Modern interpretation from Charles Townshend has judged the document to be genuine, and the opinion attributed to the Archbishop’s Palace as circumstantial. Grace Gifford, Plunkett’s widow, says that she was with Plunkett when he deciphered it at Larkfield House. Prior to his execution, Seán Mac Diarmada is met by a priest, and makes the assumptive response that it is a fraudulent document.
Ryan fights through the Easter Rising from April 24, 1916, in the General Post Office (GPO) under murderous artillery fire and describes the battle vividly in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History. He describes the garrison retreating to Moore Street and quotes Pearse’s sculptor brother Willie Pearse, who is executed a few days later, as saying “Connolly has been asked out to negotiate. They have decided to go to save the men from slaughter, for slaughter it is.”
Ryan fights in the Irish War of Independence and afterwards writes about his experiences. However, the Irish Civil War which follows from June 1922 to April 1923 repels him. He cannot accept that Irishmen would fight Irishmen.
Ryan marries Sarah Hartley in 1933. In 1939 they return to Ireland, where he edits the Torch, a Labour paper. Finding his views at odds with the Labour Party‘s official line, publication ceases in 1944. He and his wife then move to Swords in north County Dublin, where they operate a poultry farm.
In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”
After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.
Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”
Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.
seamus dubhghaill 