Joyce is a native Irish speaker who starts his education at a hedge school. He then attends school in Mitchelstown, County Cork.
Joyce starts work in 1845 with the Commission of National Education. He becomes a teacher and principal of the Model School, Clonmel. In 1856 he is one of fifteen teachers selected to re-organize the national school system in Ireland. Meanwhile he earns his B.A. in 1861 and M.A. in 1863 from Trinity College Dublin.
Joyce is a key cultural figure of his time. His wide interests include the Irish language, Hiberno-English, music, education, Irish literature and folklore, Irish history and antiquities, place names and much else. He produces many works on the history and culture of Ireland. His most enduring work is the pioneering The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places (first edition published in 1869). He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
In 1856 Joyce marries Caroline Waters of Baltinglass, County Wicklow, with whom he has two daughters and three sons, one of whom is the author Weston St. John Joyce. He dies on January 7, 1914, at his home, Barnalee, Rathmines, Dublin, and is buried two days later in Glasnevin Cemetery.
The P.W. Joyce collection at the Cregan Library in St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin, reflects many of Joyce’s interests and includes several rarities. These include autographed presentation copies by Joyce and his brother Robert, as well as books from Joyce’s own library. The collection also contains nine manuscripts associated with Joyce and his family members, including a manuscript in P.W. Joyce’s own hand of Echtra Cormaic itir Tairngiri agus Ceart Claíd Cormaic (Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise), a passage from the Book of Ballymote, which Joyce translated into English.
Duff is born in Dublin on June 7, 1889, at 97 Phibsboro Road, the eldest of seven children of John Duff and his wife, Susan Letitia (née Freehill). The wealthy family lives in the city at St. Patrick’s Road, Drumcondra. He attends Blackrock College.
In 1908, Duff enters the Civil Service and is assigned to the Irish Land Commission. In 1913, he joins the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and is exposed to the real poverty of Dublin. Many who live in tenement squalor are forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance, and abject poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution are rife in parts of Dublin. He joins and soon rises through the ranks to President of the St. Patrick’s Conference at St. Nicholas of Myra Parish. Having concern for people he sees as materially and spiritually deprived, he gets the idea to picket Protestant soup kitchens as he considers they are giving aid in the form of food and free accommodation at hostels in return for not attending Catholic services. He sets up rival Catholic soup kitchens and, with his friend, Sergeant Major Joe Gabbett, discourages Catholics from patronizing Protestant soup kitchens. They succeeded in closing down two of them over the years.
Duff publishes his first pamphlet, Can we be Saints?, in 1916. In it, he expresses the conviction that all, without exception, are called to be saints, and that through Christian faith, all have the means necessary.
Duff briefly acts as private secretary to Michael Collins, the chairman of the Provisional Government and the commander-in-chief of the National Army. In 1924, he is transferred to the Department of Finance.
On September 7, 1921, Duff is a part of a meeting alongside Fr. Michael Toher and fifteen women which becomes the nucleus of what would become the Legion of Mary. The Legion of Mary is created to organise lay Catholics to perform voluntary work. He models the organisation on Roman legions. Some of the first causes the Legion pursues is to become involved with homelessness and prostitution in Dublin. In 1922, he defies the wishes of the Archbishop of Dublin and the widespread Crypto-Calvinism, or Jansenism, within the Catholic Church in Ireland, which had created an intense hostility towards both prostitutes and other allegedly “fallen women.” Similarly, to St. Vitalis of Gaza before him, he begins an outreach to the prostitutes living in often brutal and inhuman conditions in the “kip houses” of “the Monto,” as Dublin’s red-light district, one of the largest in Europe at the time, is then called. Although middle-class Dubliners dismissively view these women as “whores,” the impoverished but devoutly Catholic residents of the Monto tenements refer to local prostitutes as “unfortunate girls,” and understand that they often turn to prostitution as a last resort. As part of his work, Duff establishes the Sancta Maria hostel, a safe house for former prostitutes who had run away from their “kip keepers.” Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, he also persuades the first Catholic Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, former Irish Army General W. R. E. Murphy, to launch a crackdown and, even though prostitution in the Republic of Ireland, rooted in human trafficking, still exists, the closure of the Monto’s last “Kip-Houses” is announced on March 12, 1925.
In 1927, Duff establishes the Morning Star hostel for homeless men, followed shortly by the Regina Coeli hostel for homeless women in 1930. Unlike the Magdalen Asylums, the Regina Coeli hostel reflects his view that unwed mothers should be taught how to be able to provide for and raise their children. This defies the norm of the era which holds that the children of unwed mothers should be saved from the stigma of their illegitimacy by being put up for adoption as quickly as possible.
While Duff enjoys the support of W. T. Cosgrave, Ireland’s head of government, and in May 1931 is granted an audience with Pope Pius XI, his efforts are opposed internally in the Dublin diocese. The Archbishop of Dublin Edward Joseph Byrne and his successor John Charles McQuaid seek to censor him because of his involvement with prostitutes. McQuaid also does not approve of his ecumenical efforts. In the 1930s and 1940s Duff creates the Mercier Society, a study group designed to bring together Catholics and Protestants, as well as the Pillar of Fire, a group designed to promote dialogue with Ireland’s Jewish community. In communication with Irish social dissidents Seán Ó Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, he suggests he is far more censored than even they are.
Duff does have some supporters amongst the Catholic hierarchy though. With the backing of Cardinal Joseph MacRory and Francis Bourne of Westminster, the Legion is able to expand rapidly and internationally. In 1928 the Legion establishes its first presidium in Scotland. In 1932 he is able to use the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress of Dublin to introduce the concept of the Legion of Mary to several visiting bishops, leading to further international growth.
Duff retires from the Civil Service in 1934 to devote all of his time to the Legion of Mary.
In July 1940, an overseas club for Afro-Asian students in Dublin is created. At that time Ireland is a popular destination for students from Asia and Africa because of its recent anti-imperial, anti-colonial history. Duff personally funds the purchase of a building for the club using funds from an inheritance. The club lasts until 1976 and facilitate many notable students, including Jaja Wachuku.
For the rest of his life, and with the help of many others, Duff guides the Legion’s worldwide extension. Today, the Legion of Mary has an estimated four million active members and 10 million auxiliary members in close to 200 countries in almost every diocese in the Catholic Church.
In 1965, Pope Paul VI invites Duff to attend the Second Vatican Council as a lay observer. When he is introduced to the assembly by the Archbishop of Liverpool, John Heenan, he receives a standing ovation.
Duff dies in Dublin at the age of 91 on November 7, 1980, and is interred at Glasnevin Cemetery. In July 1996, the cause of his beatification is introduced by Cardinal Desmond Connell.
Murray lectures in the Mater Dei Institute of Education from 1969, becoming professor of moral theology at Holy Cross College, located in Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin. He also lectures at University College Dublin from 1973 to 1982 in Catechetics and from 1978 to 1982 in Medical Ethics.
In 1981, Murray is appointed Titular Bishop of Glenndálocha and Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, making him the youngest bishop at the time, aged only 41. He is appointed as Bishop of Limerick on February 10, 1996, by Pope John Paul II. He is installed as Bishop of Limerick on March 24, 1996.
In November 2009, Murray is pressured to resign from his post after the Murphy Report finds that he had mishandled child sexual abuse allegations within his diocese.
Murray announces his resignation to a congregation, including priests of the Diocese, people working in the Diocesan Office and the Diocesan Pastoral Centre, at 11:00 a.m. (noon in Rome, the hour of the publication of the decision) in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick.
O’Donnell is born on February 22, 1893, in Meenmore, near Dungloe, County Donegal, youngest among six sons and three daughters of Biddy and James O’Donnell. He is greatly influenced by his upbringing in the Rosses, in northwest Donegal, one of the poorest and most remote parts of Ireland. His father, a popular local fiddler, earns a living through his smallholding, seasonal labouring in Scotland, and winter work in a local corn mill. His mother, who comes from a radical labour and nationalist political background, works in a local cooperative store. He attends Rampart national school and Roshine national school, near Burtonport, where he is a monitor for four years. In 1911 he wins a scholarship to attend St. Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, Dublin, and returns in 1913 to the Rosses, where he spends two years teaching on the islands of Inishfree. In 1915 he is appointed head of Derryhenny national school, near Dungloe, and the following year becomes principal of a national school on the island of Arranmore, where he begins to write.
O’Donnell had long been concerned by the poor conditions of the local ‘tatie-hokers’ (potato pickers) who migrate annually to Scotland. In the summer of 1918, he travels there to help organise the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union. While there he is influenced by left-wing radicals such as Willie Gallacher, later a communistMember of Parliament (MP), and Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, later Baron Shinwell. In September 1918, against a background of rising labour militancy, he leaves teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in the west Ulster area. The following year he organises one of Ireland’s first “soviets” when the attendants and nurses of the Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum occupy the grounds and appoint O’Donnell as governor until their demands are met.
In early 1919 O’Donnell joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Monaghan, resigning from the ITGWU for full-time IRA service in late 1920. He leads the 2nd Battalion, Donegal IRA, from the summer of 1920. In December 1920 he goes “on the run” and leads a flying column in west Donegal until May 1921, when he is wounded. Regarded as insubordinate and militarily inexperienced, he is unpopular among the other senior officers of the 1st Northern Division. He, in turn, is disappointed by the lack of social radicalism among the nationalist leadership. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, is placed in command of the minority anti-treaty 1st Northern Division and is a member of the IRA executive that occupies the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the provisional government.
Arrested in June 1922, O’Donnell shares a prison cell with Liam Mellows and influences his radical “Notes from Mountjoy,” an important document for subsequent left-wing republicans. He spends the next two years in various prisons and internment camps. His execution is widely expected to follow those of December 8, 1922. In August 1923, he is elected as a Sinn FéinTeachta Dála (TD) for Donegal in the general election called after the end of the Irish Civil War. He goes on hunger strike for forty-one days in late 1923 and succeeds in escaping from the Curragh in March 1924. In June 1924, while on the run, he marries Lile O’Donel, a wealthy Cumann na mBan activist who had smuggled communications for republican prisoners. O’Donel, a radical and member of the Communist Party, is the daughter of Ignatius O’Donel, a prominent landowner from Mayo. They have no children but raise their nephew, Peadar Joe, as their own son after the death in New York of O’Donnell’s brother Joe.
O’Donnell begins writing seriously while in jail and remains a prolific writer, journalist, and editor until the 1960s. His first novel, Storm, set in the Irish War of Independence, is published in 1925. One of his most highly regarded books, Islanders, is published in 1928. Adrigoole, like Islanders a story of poverty and starvation in rural Ireland, is published the following year. The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934) soon follow. The most significant of his later novels is probably The Big Windows (1954). Foremost among his qualities as a writer is his empathy for the people, life, and landscape of rural Ireland. But his novels have been criticised for their slow pace, excessive detail, and didactic nature. He claims his writing is incidental to his political activism. His trilogy of autobiographical non-fiction, The Gates flew Open (1932), Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1936), and There Will Be Another Day (1963), which respectively concern the Irish Civil War, his activism during the Spanish Civil War, and his role in the land annuities agitation, remain highly regarded. His other important literary achievement is with The Bell, an innovative literary and political magazine which plays a useful dissenting role in an insular and conservative period. He founds The Bell with the writer Seán Ó Faoláin in 1940 and edits it from 1946 until it ceases publication in 1954.
O’Donnell exercises an influential role in the interwar IRA, particularly through his editorship of An Phoblacht (1926–29), which he attempts to divert from militarism to socialist agitation. His ultimate aim is for a thirty-two-county socialist republic. His most successful campaign is organising small farmers against the payment of land annuities to the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This campaign is later adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributes to their electoral success in 1932. He is less successful in radicalising the IRA. After the failure of Saor Éire, a left-wing IRA front which provokes clerical and popular hostility against the IRA, increasing tensions between the IRA’s left-wing and the leadership lead O’Donnell, along with Frank Ryan and George Gilmore, to split from the IRA to establish the short-lived Republican Congress in 1934.
Although O’Donnell claims he was never a Communist Party member, he plays a central role in forging links between republicans and the revolutionary left both in Ireland and internationally and invariably supports the communist party line at critical junctures. After the failure of Republican Congress, he takes up the cause of the Spanish republic. His championing of unpopular causes such as communism and Spain entail a good deal of frustration. He is physically attacked at political meetings and in 1932, despite having never visited the Soviet Union, loses a high-profile libel action against the Dominican Irish Rosary, which claim he had studied in Moscow‘s Lenin College. He is banned from entering the United States for several decades, although he maintains: “My relations with all the great powers continue to be friendly.”
O’Donnell continues to support radical campaigns until his death. He is an outspoken advocate of Irish emigrants. He is prominent in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and serves as its president in the early 1960s. He is a leading protester against the Vietnam War and a supporter of African anti-colonial movements such as that against apartheid. In later years he is involved in the “Save the west” campaign, highlighting the problems of the west of Ireland.
After several months of ill-health following a heart attack, O’Donnell dies in Dublin, aged 93, on May 13, 1986. He leaves instructions that there are to be “no priests, no politicians and no pomp” at his funeral, and those wishes are granted. He is cremated in Glasnevin Cemetery and his ashes are buried at his wife’s home in Swinford, County Mayo. Although he once remarked that every cause he fought for was a failure, he is now regarded as one of the most influential socialist republican theorists and an important voice of dissent in twentieth-century Ireland.
(From: “O’Donnell, Peadar” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)
Ryan is Professor of Oriental Languages at University College Dublin before his appointment by Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland on December 29, 1971. Maintaining his connection and interest in oriental studies, he serves as chairman of the trustees of the Chester Beatty Library from 1978 to 1984.
During his term, Ryan consolidates much of the expansion of the archdiocese which had taken place during the term of his predecessor. He also oversees the fuller implementation of the reforms of Vatican II. He is particularly interested in liturgical reform.
Ryan also takes a traditional stand on social issues, including poverty, family life and opposition to abortion. He strongly promotes the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1983, granting the equal right to life to mother and unborn.
As Archbishop, Ryan gives the people of Dublin a public park on a site earmarked by his predecessors for a proposed cathedral. It is named “Archbishop Ryan Park” in his honour. The land, at Merrion Square, is a gift from the archbishop to the city of Dublin.
Ryan is named in the Murphy Report, released in 2009, on sexual abuse of children in Dublin. His actions in respect of complaints against priest Fr. McNamee are described in the report as “an example of how, throughout the 1970s, the church authorities were more concerned with the scandal that would be created by revealing Fr. McNamee’s abuse rather than any concern for the abused.” He also does not act on complaints against other priests who are also subsequently confirmed to be abusers.
In January 2010, after Ryan has been criticised in the Murphy Report the previous year, Dublin City Council seeks public views on renaming “Archbishop Ryan Park.” Later that same year it is renamed “Merrion Square Park” by the City Council.
O’Kelly is born James Kelly in Mobhill, Loughrea, County Galway, youngest of seven (or possibly eight) children of Michael Kelly, corn merchant, and his wife, Catherine Fitzgerald. His date of birth is uncertain. Some commentators believe he is the James Kelly whose birth was registered on November 16, 1875, but relatives claim this was a sibling and namesake who died prematurely. His death certificate implies he was born in 1878, and family members maintained he was born in 1880.
Loughrea is at the centre of the bitterly fought plan of campaign agitation on the Clanricarde estate from the late 1880s. Many tenants in the town and surrounding rural districts are evicted for non-payment of rent, and Lord Clanricarde resists reinstatement until the estate is purchased by special legislation shortly before World War I. According to one source, the O’Kellys are themselves evicted during the Plan of Campaign, though they seem to retain a degree of financial stability. A widespread perception that nationalist politicians had exploited the evicted tenants contributes to the relative strength of Parnellism in the area, and the early appearance of Sinn Féin. This background inspires such works as O’Kelly’s 1917 play, The Parnellite.
While growing up in Loughrea, O’Kelly is profoundly influenced by contact with older relatives and country folk from whom he learns some Irish and the folklore/storytelling tradition that shapes many of his stories. The example of his mother and friendship with the local Carmelite fathers, whom he serves as an altar boy, gives him a strong commitment to Catholicism. This coexists in his work with an Ibsenite-Parnellite insistence on individual defiance of conformity, and a gentle exaltation of the sensitive dreamer isolated from the life around him. The mixture is sometimes uneasy. His observations on domestic violence, the sexual exploitation of servant girls by hypocritically pious employers, and prejudice against children born outside marriage or raised in the workhouse are unobtrusive but biting. His play, The Bribe (1913), gives a devastating depiction of the social and economic pressures which induce a small-town shopkeeper and poor law guardian to accept a bribe to appoint an underqualified dispensary doctor, with disastrous results. The corrupt and snobbish doctor is called Power O’Connor, an unsubtle hit at the nationalist MP, T. P. O’Connor. This element of social observation distinguishes him from the more symbolist city-born Daniel Corkery, to whom he is often compared. Much of his writing is recognisably set in Loughrea.
O’Kelly begins working as a journalist on local papers, including the Midland Tribune, the Tuam News, and the Connacht Leader. He becomes editor of The Southern Star, based in Skibbereen, County Cork, in 1903, and is said to be the youngest newspaper editor in Ireland at the time. He moves to Naas, County Kildare, in 1906, as editor of the Leinster Leader. Here he lives in a house by the canal, which provides the inspiration for his linked series of short stories, The Golden Barque, along with his father, a nephew, and his brother Michael. Already a contributor to The United Irishman published by Arthur Griffith, and later its successor, Sinn Féin, he is active in the Naas Sinn Féin club and makes regular weekend visits to Dublin, where Griffith introduces him to Dublin literary circles. Here his closest friends are James Stephens, whose influence is visible in the more whimsical and fantastic elements of O’Kelly’s work, and Seumas O’Sullivan, who recalls O’Kelly as a man of remarkable gentleness and integrity.
O’Kelly’s journalistic career is accompanied by his development as a writer, publishing stories in a variety of outlets, including the Irish Rosary and the Irish Packet. From 1908 he has several plays produced by the Theatre of Ireland, a nationalist-oriented rival to the Abbey Theatre. Lustre (1913), written jointly with Casimir Markievicz, later becomes the basis for a Soviet film.
Around 1911, O’Kelly suffers a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which leaves him with a chronic heart condition and a strong sense of mortality. He continues to write extensively and with increasing skill. He becomes editor of Dublin’s The Saturday Evening Post in 1912 and moves to Dublin, where he lives in Drumcondra. At this time he is an occasional contributor to The Manchester Guardian, turning down a permanent job on that paper. He leaves the Post in 1915 because of continuing ill-health and is offered the editorship of The Sunday Freeman but has to retire after two weeks. He then returns to Naas. At this time his play Driftwood, commissioned by Annie Horniman, is produced in Manchester and London.
When O’Kelly’s brother is interned after the Easter Rising, he resumes the editorship of the Leinster Leader until his brother’s release at Christmas 1916. He also contributes topical articles to the Sunday Independent. His literary reputation continues to increase with a short story collection, Waysiders (1917), and his best-regarded full-length novel, The Lady of Deerpark (1917), a melancholy story about the last heiress of a declining Catholic gentry family. Another novel, Wet Clay (1922), is published posthumously and is the story of the tense relationship between a “returned Yank” and his small-farmer cousins, which shows deeply unresolved ambivalence about the nature and prospects of Irish rural society after the Land War.
When Griffith and many other Sinn Féin activists are arrested and imprisoned in May 1918, O’Kelly returns to Dublin to edit the Sinn Féin paper Nationality. During the days after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, a crowd of soldiers and women whose husbands are serving in the British Army attack the paper’s premises, which are also the headquarters of Sinn Féin. As a result of these attacks O’Kelly suffers a cerebral haemorrhage which leads to his death on November 14, 1918.
O’Kelly’s funeral turns into a major political demonstration and his status as a nationalist martyr leads to the posthumous publication of many of his works. These include the novella, The Weaver’s Grave (1920), generally regarded as his masterpiece. It has been reprinted regularly and translated into several languages. A 1961 Radio Éireann adaptation by Micheal Ó hAodha wins the Prix Italia. The twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries of his death see various commemorations in his honour and a short-lived Seumas O’Kelly Society is founded in 1968. O’Kelly never marries but is said to have cherished a hopeless passion for the actress and nationalist activist, Máire Níc Shiubhlaigh, for whom he writes the play The Shuiler’s Child (1909).
(From: “O’Kelly, Seumas” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
By 1972, Ahern has met his future wife, Miriam Kelly, a bank official who lives near the Aherns’ family home. They marry in St. Columba’s Church, Iona Road in 1975. They have two daughters from the marriage, Georgina and Cecelia. Georgina is the wife of Westlife member Nicky Byrne. Cecelia is a best-selling author. The Aherns separate in 1992.
Ahern is elected to the Dáil, the lower house of the Oireachtas, in 1977 as a member of the Fianna Fáil party for the newly created Dublin Finglas constituency. He is elected to the Dublin City Council in 1979, later becoming Lord Mayor of Dublin (1986–87). An assistant whip (1980–81) in the first government of Taoiseach Charles Haughey, he becomes a junior minister in Haughey’s second government (1982) and Minister for Labour in his third (1987–89) and fourth (1989–91) governments.
Ahern’s success in establishing general economic agreements with employers, unions, and farmers in 1987 and 1990 and his role in constructing the first Fianna Fáil coalition government (with the Progressive Democrats) in 1989 confirms his reputation as a skillful negotiator. He is made Minister for Finance in 1991. In the contest to choose Haughey’s successor, Ahern withdraws in favour of Albert Reynolds, and he remains Minister for Finance in each of Reynolds’s two governments (February–November 1992 and 1993–94). In November 1994, following the fall of the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party government, Reynolds resigns, and Ahern is elected party leader. He is set to become Taoiseach in a new coalition with the Labour Party, but at the eleventh-hour Labour opts to join a government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left.
Ahern forms a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats minority government following elections in 1997. Credited with overseeing a thriving economy, he is reelected Taoiseach in 2002. He plays a major role in securing peace in Northern Ireland, participating in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and helping negotiate the return of devolution to Northern Ireland in 2007. On May 15, 2007, he becomes the first Taoiseach to address a joint session of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Soon afterward Ahern wins a third term as Taoiseach. He is reelected despite implications of his involvement in an influence-peddling scandal. The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters & Payments, ultimately better known as the Mahon Tribunal, which is investigating alleged illegal payments by developers to politicians to influence zoning decisions in and around Dublin during the early 1990s, subsequently questions Ahern about his personal finances during his tenure as Minister for Finance. In early April 2008, as the investigation of Ahern’s involvement mounts, he announces that he will step down as Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fáil in May. He is succeeded in both posts by Brian Cowen. In the Mahon Tribunal’s final report, issued on March 22, 2012, it indicates that it does not believe Ahern had told the truth when questioned by the commission about alleged financial improprieties, though it does not directly accuse him of corruption. Ahern, threatened with expulsion from Fianna Fáil in the wake of the report, resigns from the party later in March while still maintaining that he had testified truthfully to the tribunal.
Ahern says in April 2018 that he is considering running for President of Ireland in 2025 as an independent candidate. That same month he walks out of an interview with DW News after being questioned on the findings of the Mahon Tribunal.
In October 2018, Ahern is appointed to chair the Bougainville Referendum Commission, which is responsible for preparing an independence referendum in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which takes place in December 2019.
On July 30, 1919, the first assassination authorised by Michael Collins is carried out by The Squad, also known as the Twelve Apostles, when Detective Sergeant “the Dog” Smith is shot near Drumcondra, Dublin.
On April 10, 1919, the First Dáil announces a policy of ostracism of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men. At the time Sinn Féin official policy is against acts of violence. Boycotting, persuasion and mild intimidation succeed against many officers. However, others escalate their activities against republicans and in March 1920 Collins asks Dick McKee to select a small group to form an assassination unit.
When The Squad is formed, it comes directly under the control of the Director of Intelligence or his deputy and under no other authority. The Squad is commanded by Mick McDonnell.
The original “Twelve Apostles” are Mick McDonnell, Tom Keogh, Jimmy Slattery, Paddy Daly, Joe Leonard, Ben Barrett, Vincent Byrne, Sean Doyle, Paddy Griffin, Eddie Byrne, Mick Reilly and Jimmy Conroy. After some time, The Squad is strengthened with members Ben Byrne, Frank Bolster, Mick Keogh, Mick Kennedy, Bill Stapleton and Sam Robinson. Owen Cullen, a member of 2nd Battalion, is driver for a short time, and Paddy Kelly of County Clare for a short time. They are employed full-time and received a weekly wage.
Sometimes, as occasion demands, The Squad is strengthened by members of the IRA Intelligence Staff, the Active Service Unit, munition workers and members of the Dublin Brigade, TipperaryFlying Column men, Dan Breen, Séumas Robinson, Seán Treacy and Seán Hogan, and also Mick Brennan and Michael Prendergast of County Clare. The IRA Intelligence Staff consists of the Director of Intelligence Michael Collins, the Deputy Director of Intelligence Liam Tobin, the Second Deputy Director of Intelligence Tom Cullen, the Third Director of Intelligence Frank Thornton, and members Joe Dolan, Frank Saurin, Ned Kelleher, Joe Guilfoyle, Paddy Caldwell, Paddy Kennedy, Charlie Dalton, Dan McDonnell and Charlie Byrne. The munitions workers include Mat Furlong, Sean Sullivan, Gay McGrath, Martin O’ Kelly, Tom Younge and Chris Reilly.
Other members include Mick Love, Gearoid O’Sullivan, Patrick Caldwell, Charlie Dalton, Mick O’Reilly, Sean Healy, James Ronan, Paddy Lawson, John Dunne, Johnny Wilson and James Heery. Seán Lemass and Stephen Behan, the father of Irish writers Brendan and Dominic Behan, have also been listed as members of the Apostles. There is no hard evidence to support the inclusion of many of the names, but those who subsequently serve in the Irish Army have their active service recorded in their service records held in the Military Archives Department in Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines. Andrew Cooney is also reported to have been associated with The Squad. Stephen Behan’s involvement is first made public in 1962, when the BBC broadcasts an episode of This Is Your Life dedicated to Behan. During the broadcast, remaining members of the squad joined Behan on the set of the show.
Following “The Dog” Smith’s assassination, The Squad continues to target plainclothes police, members of the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and, occasionally, problematic civil servants. Organisationally it operates as a subsection of Collins’ Intelligence Headquarters. Two of the executions by The Squad are the killing on January 21, 1920, of RIC Inspector William Redmond of the DMP “G” Division and on March 2, 1920, a British double agent John Charles Byrnes.
One of the Apostles’ particular targets is the Cairo Gang, a deep-cover British intelligence group, so called since it has either been largely assembled from intelligence officers serving in Cairo or from the Dublin restaurant called The Cairo, which the gang frequents. Sir Henry Wilson brings in the Cairo Gang in the middle of 1920, explicitly to deal with Michael Collins and his organization. Given carte blanche in its operations by Wilson, the Cairo Gang adopts the strategy of assassinating members of Sinn Féin unconnected with the military struggle, assuming that this will cause the IRA to respond and bring its leaders into the open.
The most well-known operation executed by the Apostles occurs on what becomes known as Bloody Sunday, November 21, 1920, when British MI5 officers, linked to the Cairo Gang and significantly involved in spying, are shot at various locations in Dublin with fourteen killed and six wounded. In addition to the The Squad, a larger number of IRA personnel are involved in this operation. The only IRA man captured during the operation is Frank Teeling. In response to the killings, the Black and Tans retaliate by shooting up a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park, the proceeds from which are for the Irish Republican Prisoners Fund. Fourteen civilians are killed including one of the players, Michael Hogan, and 68 are wounded. The Hogan stand at Croke Park is named after Hogan.
The elimination of the Cairo Gang is seen in Dublin as an intelligence victory, but British Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George comments dismissively that his men “… got what they deserved, beaten by counterjumpers…”. Winston Churchill adds that they were “.. careless fellows … who ought to have taken precautions.”
Some members of The Squad are hanged in 1921 for the killings on Bloody Sunday, including Thomas Whelan and Patrick Moran. Moran had killed a vet, Patrick MacCormack, who seems to have been an innocent victim.
In May 1921, after the IRA’s Dublin Brigade takes heavy casualties during the burning of the Custom House, The Squad and the Brigade’s Active Service Unit are amalgamated into the Dublin Guard, under Paddy Daly. Under the influence of Daly and Michael Collins, most of the Guard take the Free State side and join the National Army in the Irish Civil War of 1922–23. During this conflict some of them are attached to the Criminal Investigation Department and are accused of multiple assassinations of Anti-Treaty fighters. They are also involved in several atrocities against Republican prisoners, particularly after the death of Collins, due to many of them having personal ties with him.
Bill Stapleton goes on to become a director in Bord na Móna, Charles Dalton and Frank Saurin become directors in the Irish Sweepstakes. In October 1923, Commandant James Conroy is implicated in the murder of two Jewish men, Bernard Goldberg and Emmanuel ‘Ernest’ Kahn. He avoids arrest by fleeing to Mexico, returning later to join the Blueshirts. A later application for an army pension is rejected. The killings are the subject of a 2010 investigative documentary by RTÉ, CSÍ: Murder in Little Jerusalem.
Eugene Rutherford Watters is the eldest of two sons and two daughters born to Thomas Watters, a soldier, and his wife, Maud Sproule. His second name comes from his grandfather, Rutherford Sproule. He is educated at Garbally College. He enters St. Patrick’s Teacher Training College, Drumcondra, Dublin, in 1939, graduating with a Diploma in Education in 1945. He is awarded an MA, by University College Dublin in 1947.
Ó Tuairisc writes novels, verse, drama and criticism in both Irish and English. His first major publication is his controversial novel Murder in Three Moves (1960), followed by the Irish-language prose epic L’Attaque (1962), which wins an Irish Book Club award. Both works have a strong poetic flavour. His next book is a volume of verse entitled Week-End. His narrative poem The Weekend of Dermot and Grace (1964), an Irish version of Venus and Adonis, is considered his finest work.
Ó Tuairisc’s first wife, the Irish artist Una McDonnell, dies in 1965. He produces little during the five years following McDonnell’s death, which is an unsettled period of limited productivity, changing residence and jobs, and, ultimately, serious depression. In 1972 he marries the writer Rita Kelly, also of Ballinasloe. They live in the lock house at the Maganey Lock on the River Barrow that he had bought near Carlow, County Carlow.
In 1981 Ó Tuairisc publishes The Road to Brightcity: and other stories (Swords: Poolbeg Press, 1981), a translation of nine of the best short stories written originally in Irish by Máirtín Ó Cadhain. Also in 1981, he and Rita Kelly publish a joint collection of their poems, Dialann sa Díseart.
Like Diarmaid Ó Súilleabháin, Ó Tuairisc “challenged the critical orthodoxy by openly proclaiming that their standards could not be those of the Gaeltacht and by demanding a creative freedom that would acknowledge hybridity and reject the strictures of the linguistic purists.”
Ó Tuairisc is an inaugural member of Aosdána, when it is founded in 1981, and the first of its members to die. He is a recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland prize, as well as an Abbey Theatre prize for a Christmas pantomime in Irish.
Ó Tuairisc dies on August 24, 1982. He is survived by his second wife, Rita. A bibliography of his work, together with biographical information, is published in Irish in 1988.
Traynor is born into a strongly nationalist family in Dublin. He is educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1899, he is apprenticed to John Long, a famous woodcarver. As a young man he is a noted footballer and tours Europe as a goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic F.C. whom he plays with from 1910 to 1912. He rejects claims soccer is a foreign sport calling it “a Celtic game, pure and simple, having its roots in the Highlands of Scotland.”
When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, Traynor takes the Anti-Treaty IRA side. The Dublin Brigade is split, however, with many of its members following Michael Collins in taking the pro-Treaty side. During the Battle of Dublin, he is in charge of the Barry’s Hotel garrison, before making their escape. He organises guerilla activity in south Dublin and County Wicklow, before being captured by Free State troops in September. He is then imprisoned for the remainder of the war.
In 1936, Traynor is first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In September 1939, he is appointed Minister for Defence and holds the portfolio to February 1948. In 1948, he becomes President of the Football Association of Ireland, a position he holds until his death. He serves as Minister for Defence in several Fianna Fáil governments and as Minister for Justice, where he is undermined by his junior minister, and later Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, before he retires in 1961.
Traynor dies in Dublin at the age of 77 on December 15, 1963. He has a road named in his memory, running from the Malahide Road through Coolock to Santry in Dublin’s northern suburbs.
(Pictured: Minister for Defence Oscar Traynor at his desk, June 1940)
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