seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Pierce McCan


by Leave a comment

Death of Josephine McNeill, First Irish Female Diplomat

Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, dies in Dublin on November 19, 1969. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.

McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA,  H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.

McNeill becomes engaged to Pierce McCan, but he dies of influenza in Gloucester Gaol in March 1919. She marries James McNeill in 1923, while he is serving as Irish High Commissioner in London. Despite her reservations, she becomes a noted hostess, both in London and later in Dublin when her husband becomes the Governor-General of the Irish Free State from 1928 to 1932.

After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.

McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.

McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.

McNeill dies in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, on November 19, 1969. She is buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery. Her papers are held in the UCD Archives.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Pierce McCan

Pierce McCan, Sinn Féin politician, is born at Prospect Lodge, Ballyanne Desmesne, County Wexford, on August 2, 1882. 

McCan is the son of Francis McCan, a land agent, and Jane Power. He is the nephew of Patrick Joseph Power, MP for East Waterford from 1885 to 1913. He attends Clongowes Wood College and Downside School. He resides at Ballyowen House, Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary, and is an “extensive farmer” and is a member of the Tipperary Hunt.

McCan is a founder member of Sinn Féin in 1905. He joins the Gaelic League in 1909 and is a member of the Irish Volunteers from 1914 onward.

After more than 2,000 German and Austrian prisoners are imprisoned at Richmond Barracks, Templemore, County Tipperary, following the first battles of World War I in 1914, he plots to engineer a mass escape but is thwarted when the prisoners are removed to Leigh, Lancashire in 1915. He is interned in 1916 after the Easter Rising for several months in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, and Knutsford, England. In May 1918, he is arrested under the German Plot and detained in Gloucester Gaol.

McCan is president of the East Tipperary executive of Sinn Féin. While incarcerated, he is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the East Tipperary constituency at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.

In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembles in the Mansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. McCan never sits in Dáil Éireann, dying in prison on March 6, 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic. On March 9, 1919, he is buried in Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary.

No by-election is called to replace him in the UK constituency. After April 1, 1922, the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 prohibits any by-election, and the constituency is abolished when parliament is dissolved on October 26, 1922, for the general election on November 15.

The First Dáil also considers how to fill the vacancy. A select committee in April recommends that the local Sinn Féin organisation which nominated him should nominate his replacement. A June proposal to postpone action, either for six months or until a Westminster by-election is held, is referred to another committee, which recommends that “in view of the circumstances which occasioned the vacancy, it was due to the memory of the late Pierce McCann that his place should not be filled at present.”

On April 10, 1919, Cathal Brugha tells the First Dáil: “Before I formally move the motion, as I have mentioned the name of Pierce McCan, I would ask the Members of the Dáil to stand up as a mark of our respect to the first man of our body to die for Ireland, and of our sympathy with his relatives. We are sure that their sorrow is lightened by the fact that his death was for the cause for which he would have lived, and that his memory will ever be cherished in the hearts of the comrades who knew him, and will be honoured by succeeding generations of his countrymen with that of the other martyrs of our holy cause.” The McCan Barracks in Templemore, County Tipperary, is named after him.

In the 1933 Irish general election, McCan’s brother, Joseph, a member of the National Farmers’ and Ratepayers’ Association, stands unsuccessfully for the National Centre Party in the Tipperary constituency.