Hamilton begins his commentary career with BBC Sport, before joining RTÉ eight years later in 1984. He had previously worked for RTÉ during the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Since 2003, he works for RTÉ lyric fm, Ireland’s classical radio station, on Saturday mornings. For many years, he fronts a popular weekly quiz show on RTÉ, Know Your Sport, alongside fellow commentator Jimmy Magee.
Hamilton is chief commentator for RTÉ Sport‘s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the ninth one in which he has been involved. He is RTÉ’s chief commentator at UEFA Euro 2012 and commentates on all of Ireland’s matches in the competition. He is involved in the coverage of the Olympic Games since the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Hamilton is known for his use of colourful phrases and memorable quotes when commentating on games, his phrase describing David O’Leary‘s penalty against Romania in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, “The nation holds its breath,” is used for a book of Irish football quotations, compiled by Eoghan Corry, for which Hamilton writes the foreword.
The sports humour website, DangerHere.com, takes its title from another quote by Hamilton: “And Bonner has gone 165 minutes of these championships without conceding a goal. Oh, danger here…”
Córas Iompair Éireann is formed as a private company by the Transport Act 1944 and incorporates the Great Southern Railways Company and Dublin United Transport Company, initially adopting the logo of the latter company. Great Southern Railways (GSR) is incorporated in 1925, having been Great Southern Railway since 1924. Essentially the GSR becomes – especially as it starts to broaden its business interests into road transport – a monopoly transport operator. The Transport Act 1950 amalgamates CIÉ and the Grand Canal Company and formally nationalises CIÉ, changing its structure from that of a private limited company to a corporation under a board appointed by the Minister for Transport. The Northern Ireland Great Northern Railway Act, 1958 transfers the lines of Great Northern Railway Board south of the border to CIÉ. Until 1986 CIÉ operates as a single legal entity, although it is internally organised into rail services and two bus divisions – Dublin City Services and Provincial Services. The vast majority of services are branded CIÉ, although long-distance provincial buses are branded “Expressway” and Dublin electric trains DART. In 1987, CIÉ reorganises into a holding company and three operating companies. In 1990 it sells its nine Great Southern Hotels, including its hotel in Derry, Northern Ireland, to Aer Rianta, the airports authority.
Since the enactment of the Transport (Re-organisation of Córas Iompair Éireann) Act, 1986 CIÉ has been the holding company for Bus Éireann, Dublin Bus and Iarnród Éireann/Irish Rail, the three largest internal transport companies in Ireland. It was originally to have operated the Luas tram system in Dublin, but that project was transferred to the newly created Railway Procurement Agency.
CIÉ is responsible for the overall strategy of the group. It owns all fixed assets used by the three companies, such as railway lines and stations, the latter being dealt with through the Group Property division. It also operates an international tour division, CIÉ Tours International. CIÉ’s vast number of advertising sites are organised through Commuter Advertising Network (CAN), since the mid-1990s employing an external company (currently Exterion Media Ireland) to manage them. There are also a number of shared services provided by CIÉ to its three operating companies.
Other than in the railway sector CIÉ is not a monopoly provider of public transport services as a number of other operators exist. However, under the Transport Act, 1932, these may not compete directly on any route for which CIÉ has been granted a licence. Legislation is enacted in 2013 to provide for the tendering of 10% of routes operated by Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann. This public competition includes these two operators, along with private operators such as Go-Ahead Ireland, and is completed in January 2019.
(Pictured: “The Broken Wheel” logo introduced in 1964 and modernised in 2000)
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)
Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turns to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.
Harrison is born in Dublin on September 29, 1905, the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May (née Nash). He becomes a chorister at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1912 and is educated at the cathedral grammar school and Mountjoy School. A competent organist, he is deputy organist at St. Patrick’s from 1925 to 1928. In 1920, he also begins musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studies with John Francis Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano). In 1926, he graduates Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and is awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19. He then works in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St. Canice’s Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.
In 1930, Harrison emigrates to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 1933, he studies briefly with Marcel Dupré in France but returns to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa. In 1935, he takes a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of “resident musician” at Queen’s University at Kingston. His duties include giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music is the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen’s. He resigns from St. George’s in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen’s in 1942. During his years in Canada he still pursues the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter’s Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).
In 1951, Harrison takes the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and becomes lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–1970) there. In 1965, he is elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. From 1970 to 1980, he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.
Harrison also holds Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–1959), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–1969), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972). He also briefly returns to Queen’s University at Kingston as Queen’s Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and is Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.
Harrison’s honorary titles also include Doctor of Laws at Queen’s University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985). At Queen’s also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) is partly named in his honour.
Harrison dies in Canterbury, England on December 29, 1987.
In 1989, Harry White appreciates Harrison as “an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused.” David F. L. Chadd writes of him “He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries.”
Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Irish Research Council Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.
Cronin is known as an arts activist as well as a writer. He is Cultural Adviser to TaoiseachCharles Haughey and briefly to Garret FitzGerald. He involves himself in initiatives such as Aosdána, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Heritage Council. He is a founding member of Aosdána, and is a member of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, for many years. He is elected Saoi, a distinction for exceptional artistic achievement, in 2003. He is also a member of the governing bodies of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Ireland, of which he is for a time Acting Chairman.
His first collection of poems, called simply Poems (Cresset Press, London), is published in 1958. Several collections follow and his Collected Poems (New Island Books, Dublin) is published in 2004. The End of the Modern World (New Island Books, 2016), written over several decades, is his final publication.
Cronin’s novel, The Life of Riley, is a satire on Bohemian life in Ireland in the mid-20th century, while his memoir Dead as Doornails addresses the same subject.
Cronin knows Samuel Beckett from when they do some work for the BBC during the 1950s and 1960s. He gives a prefatory talk to Patrick Magee‘s reading of The Unnamable on the BBC Third Programme. Beckett is not impressed, saying, “Cronin delivered his discourse… It was all right, not very exciting.” Cronin later publishes a biography of him, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1996), followed on from No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien (1989).
In his later years, Cronin suffers from failing health, which prevents him from traveling abroad, thus limiting his dealings to local matters. He dies in Dublin on December 27, 2016, one day short of his 93rd birthday.
Cronin firstly marries Thérèse Campbell, from whom he separates in the mid-1980s. She dies in 1999. They have two daughters, Iseult and Sarah. Iseult is killed in a road accident in Spain. He secondly marries the writer Anne Haverty who, along with daughter Sarah, survives him.
Markham is born on January 8, 1886, at Gower, Cooraclare, County Clare, the youngest in the large family of Michael Markham, farmer, and Margaret Markham (née Keane). She attends national school in Cooraclare from 1893 to 1899. Although she does not speak or understand the Irish language, as do her father and likely her mother, the Rosary is recited in Irish at home. She and a sister are the only siblings not to emigrate. Her mother plays the fiddle, while her older sister Margaret (Maggie) plays the concertina and probably influences her to do likewise. She has no single teacher and acquires tunes and her style of playing from neighbours and family friends. She begins to play a two-row German-type concertina at house dances throughout west Clare and becomes very much in demand.
In 1914, Markham marries Michael (Miko) Crotty from Gowerhass, the townland next to Gower. Miko had been in the United States for a couple of years and uses the money earned there to buy a public house on the Market Square in Kilrush, now known as “Crotty’s Pub.” They live in the Square in Kilrush and Miko bottles his own whiskey. The pub is an important venue for Irish traditional music, especially for those who wish to hear Crotty play. She remains relatively unknown outside of Clare until the early 1950s, and there are a relatively small number of recordings of her playing the concertina. The broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna conducts recording sessions in her house in 1955 and she is to be heard on A Job of Journeywork, his programme on Radio Éireann. She possesses a number of concertinas, but the Lachenal that she purchases in the 1950s is her favourite and the one with which she is most closely identified. In 1954, she is a founder member and the first president of the Clare branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. During her time as president, the All Ireland Fleadh is held in Ennis in 1956.
Crotty often sings the traditional song “An draighneán donn,” which is one of her favourites. Among tunes she enjoys playing are the “Ewe reel,” the “Dublin reel,” and “The maid of Mount Cisco,” along with “The wind that shakes the barley.” Her straight style of playing for dancing and dancers increases her popularity. Seán Ó Riada regards her as one of the finest concertina players he ever heard. Although she does not read or write staff notation, she creates a written code for herself by giving the concertina keys a number and by using a symbol for the press or draw movement on the concertina keys.
Crotty suffers from severe angina which necessitates visits for medical treatment to Dublin, where she becomes friends with fiddle player Kathleen Harrington (née Gardiner). They attend the Pipers’ Club in Thomas Street, play together on Radio Éireann, and travel together to fleadhanna.
Crotty dies on December 27, 1960, of an anginal attack while at her home. She is buried in (old) Shanakyle cemetery. She loses her first three children, and a son drowns in the River Shannon in 1945. Another son, Thomas, becomes a priest. A festival, ‘Éigse Mrs Crotty’, is held in her memory each summer in Kilrush. Her son Paddy gives three perpetual trophies for presentation at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil.
(From: “Crotty, Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’)” by Ríonach uí Ógáin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Cohalan graduates from Manhattan College in 1885, takes a master’s degree in 1894, and is given an honorary LL.D. in 1911. He is admitted to the bar in 1888, and practices law in New York City. In September 1889, he removes to the Bronx, practices law there, and enters politics, joining Tammany Hall, becoming an adviser to party boss Charles F. Murphy and later to John F. Curry. He is Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society from 1908 to 1911.
Cohalan is active in Democratic Party politics by 1900, drafting state party platforms and serving as a delegate to the national conventions in 1904 and 1908.
On May 18, 1911, Cohalan is appointed by Gov. John Alden Dix to the New York Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Aloysius O’Gorman as U.S. Senator from New York. In November 1911, he is elected to succeed himself. On December 28, 1923, he tenders his resignation, to become effective on January 12, 1924, claiming that the annual salary of $17,500 is not enough to provide for his large family.
Cohalan is a close associate of Irish revolutionary leader John Devoy and is influential in many Irish American societies including Clan na Gael. He helps to form the Sinn Féin League in 1907 and is a key organiser of the Irish Race Convention and the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) on March 4-5, 1916. He is involved with the financing and planning of the Easter Rising in Dublin and is instrumental in sending Roger Casement to Germany in 1914. He is Chairman of the Irish Race Convention held in Philadelphia on February 22-23, 1919, and active in the Friends of Irish Freedom (1916–34).
When the United States enters World War I, Cohalan’s earlier work to obtain German assistance for Ireland becomes a liability, but he urges Irish Americans to support the war effort and to insist that self-determination for Ireland be included among the war aims. He opposes the peace treaty and the League of Nations and leads an Irish American delegation to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings, contributing to the defeat of the treaty in the Senate.
State Senator John P. Cohalan (1873–1950) is one of Cohalan’s eleven siblings, and church historian Monsignor Florence Daniel Cohalan (1908–2001) is one of his nine children.
Davitt is born in Straide, County Mayo, on March 25, 1846. He is the founder of the Irish National Land League, which organizes resistance to absentee landlordism and seeks to relieve the poverty of the tenant farmers by securing fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of the tenant’s interest.
Davitt is the son of an evicted tenant farmer. After their eviction, the family emigrates to England. In 1856, at the age of 10, he starts work in a cotton mill, where he loses an arm in a machinery accident a year later. In 1865, he joins the revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood, an international secret society that seeks to secure political freedom for Ireland. He becomes secretary of its Irish analogue, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), in 1868. Arrested in Paddington Station in London for sending firearms to Ireland on May 14, 1870, he is sentenced to 15 years in Dartmoor Prison and there lays plans to link Charles Stewart Parnell’s constitutional reform with Fenian activism to achieve political-agrarian agitation.
Paroled from prison in 1877, Davitt rejoins the IRB and goes to the United States, where the Fenian movement originated. There he is deeply influenced by Henry George’s ideas about the relationship between land monopoly and poverty.
Back in Ireland, using funds raised by John Devoy and Clan na Gael in the United States, Davitt wins Parnell’s cooperation in organizing the Land League in 1879, which leads, however, to his expulsion from the supreme council of the IRB in 1880. He is elected member of Parliament for North Meath in 1882 but is disqualified as he is a convict. He is also imprisoned for seditious speeches in 1881 and 1883.
Because of his public championing of Henry George’s theories of land reform, Parnell repudiates him. Davitt actively defends the Nationalists before the Parnell Commission, which meets between 1887 and 1889. When the Irish party splits in 1890 over Parnell’s involvement in Capt. William Henry O’Shea’s divorce case, Davitt is among the first to oppose Parnell’s continuance as leader.
Davitt is elected to Parliament in 1892 and 1893 but is unseated in both cases. He is elected again, for South Mayo in 1895, but resigns in 1899 in protest against the Second Boer War.
Davitt dies in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on May 30, 1906, at the age of 60, from blood poisoning. The fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland attends his funeral is a public indication of the dramatic political journey this former Fenian prisoner has taken. There is no plan for public funeral, and hence Davitt’s body is brought quietly to the Carmelite Friary, Clarendon Street, Dublin. However, the next day over 20,000 people file past his coffin. His remains are taken by train to Foxford, County Mayo, and buried in the grounds of Straide Abbey at Straide, near his place of birth.
Davitt’s book, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904), is a valuable record of his time.
At the Lambeth Conference in 1988, Neill proposes all the approved resolutions in respect of Women in the Episcopate and is chairman of the Church of Ireland General Synod Committee on Ordination of Women (1988–91). He serves on many central committees of the Church of Ireland covering issues such as liturgical reform, education, communications, ministry, Christian unity and synodical structures.
Neill serves as President of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (1990-94) and as President of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (1999-2002) and is co-founder and chairman of the Church of Ireland/Methodist Church Joint Theological Working Party.
On August 29, 2002, the Church of Ireland announces that the Right Reverend John Neill, Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, is to succeed the Most Reverend Dr. Walton Empey as Archbishop of Dublin. The announcement is made at a meeting of the Church of Ireland Episcopal Electoral College in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
Neill and his wife Betty have three sons, The Reverend Canon Stephen Neill, Rector of Celbridge, Andrew Neill, a member of Garda Síochána, and Peter Neill, a photographer.
Price and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident while handling IRA explosives.
Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derrycivil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.
In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure. The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition, she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.
Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.
On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.
After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.
The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.
In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.
Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.
In 2010, Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.
Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.
Price dies in her Malahide, County Dublin, home on January 23, 2013, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. Her body is found the following day. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. She is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.
seamus dubhghaill 