Born on December 18, 1895, Roe is the daughter of William Ernest Roe and Anne Lambert Sheilds of Mountrath, County Laois. Her grandfather is Francis Henry Sheilds of Parsonstown (now Birr, County Offaly), owner of the King’s County Chronicle. She is sent first to the local primary school and then to the Preston School in Abbeyleix. Although she attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD), she does not begin her career due to the outbreak of World War I. She joins the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and serves at the Cambridge Military Hospital and at Aldershot Barracks. In the immediate aftermath, she continues her medical career with the Military Hospital in Bray, County Wicklow. She also spends time touring in Europe visiting museums and beginning her appreciation for medieval art. She is raised Protestant and has done her duty as part of the aristocracy by serving in the war. But the soldiers treat her as Irish and abuse her especially during the Easter Rising of 1916. The result is that she supports nationalism from that point forward. She goes back to TCD and completes her degree in modern languages in 1921. She finally completes her MA in 1924 and begins a teaching career. She spends time working in the Royal School, Dungannon, and Alexandra College, Milltown, Dublin.
In 1926, Roe’s parents need her, and she returns home. She then becomes the County Librarian in Laois. While working as a librarian she is able to study further and, as a rare person with a car, she tours sites and visits schools. One result of her presentations to schools is to inspire Ireland’s first female archaeologist, Ellen Prendergast. In 1940, she retires from the library and moves to Dublin where she is able to buy a house and garden. Apart from her antiquarian work, she is a regular supporter of charities and is honorary secretary of The Queen’s County Protestant Orphan’s Society and actively involved in The Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur, India.
Roe becomes a regular contributor to various journals and newspapers including Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, An Leabharlann, Béaloideas, Seanchas Ard Mhacha, Carloviana, the The Irish Press and the Leinster Express. From 1965 until 1968 she serves as the president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, the first woman to be elected to the position. She is elected to be a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1984. She continues touring and lecturing into her nineties.
Roe lives at Santry, Dublin, and later at Oak House, Sussex Road, Dublin. She dies on May 28, 1988, at Grove Nursing Home, Killiney, County Dublin, and is buried beside her parents at St. Peter’s Churchyard, Mountrath, County Laois.
The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland have an annual lecture in her honour and have named one of their lecture rooms after her.
McKenna is born Kathleen Maria Kenna on September 9, 1897, in Oldcastle, County Meath. Her parents are William, a draper and hardware merchant, and Mary Kenna (née Hanley). She is the eldest child of seven, with three sisters and three brothers. She and her siblings add “Mc” to their surname as teenagers. Her maternal grandfather, a Fenian, miller and land agitator, is a strong influence on her. Agnes O’Farrelly is her paternal great aunt. She attends the Oldcastle Endowed School and goes on to pass the National University of Ireland (NUI) matriculation examination. She attends University College Dublin (UCD) briefly, but the family’s circumstances prevent her from completing her course.
McKenna’s father had been an active member of the Irish National Land League and the Meath Labour Union. He is one of the organisers of a short-lived local newspaper, Sinn Féin – Oldcastle Monthly Review, in 1902. Both her parents are members of Conradh na Gaielge. Arthur Griffith and Brian O’Higgins frequently visit the family home. Denounced by the local parish priest, Fr. Robert Barry, her father’s business goes into decline. The family leaves Oldcastle and moves to Dundalk in August 1915, and to Rugby, Warwickshire, England, in March 1916. In Rugby, her father teaches typing and shorthand, and her mother works in an ammunition factory. She works as a secretary for an engineering firm. Members of the family return to Ireland from 1919 to 1922, and by the time of her father’s death in 1939, he is living back in Oldcastle.
McKenna spends some holidays in Ireland and, during a visit to Dublin in the summer of 1919, she presents herself to the Sinn Féin offices in Harcourt Street. She has a letter of introduction from her father to Griffith, which emphasises her willingness to work for Irish independence. For her holidays, she works in the Sinn Féin press bureau and is employed as one of the first “Dáil girls” of the clandestine government. She is informed that if a planned news bulletin comes through, she will be summoned back to Dublin. In October 1919, she receives that summons and, after a typing test on November 11, she joins the Irish Bulletin under Minister for Publicity, Desmond FitzGerald, and director of publicity, Robert Brennan. She also becomes a member of the Conradh na Gaielge Parnell branch.
The Irish Bulletin is published five times a week, circulating the misdeeds of the British government in Ireland. McKenna edits and mimeographs a summary of “acts of aggression” from British forces in Ireland weekly, compiled by Anna Kelly. Frank Gallagher does most of the writing, edited by FitzGerald, and later Erskine Childers. Though she is sometimes described as the Bulletin‘s editor, she is more akin to an editorial assistant. R. M. Smyllie later recalls that she was in regular contact with the media. She types out each issue on a wax stencil in a typewriter which is used to create mimeograph copies, and then circulated to England. In the beginning, about 30 recipients, mostly London journalists, receive the Bulletin but by October 1920 it has grown to 600, and by July 1921 over 1,200. She also keeps the accounts, takes dictation of statements, and at times works up articles from notes given to her by Griffith or others. She also acts as a confidential messenger, couriering between Dáil departments and Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders such as Michael Collins. Through this, she meets Moya Llewelyn Davies.
The Bulletin becomes a symbol of the underground government and a target for British forces. This necessitates the frequent moving of the operation from one Dublin hideout to another. She fears that if she were captured, she would break under interrogation. When FitzGerald is arrested, he is asked about “the girl wearing a green tam” in reference to McKenna’s tam-o’-shanter hat which prompts her to change her choice of hat. Despite the capture of a number of the Bulletin staff, as well as the capture of the office files and equipment on March 26, 1921, it never misses an issue.
McKenna’s sister Winifred also works as a secretary to the clandestine government. Her brother, Tadhg (Timothy), is a member of Sinn Féin and in Greenore, County Louth, is involved in trade union affairs. He is detained, beaten, and interned in March 1921. He is later an activist with the Irish Labour Party. Her brother William is a messenger for the Irish government during this period and during the Irish Civil War serves in the Free State Army.
After the truce in 1921, McKenna is assigned to the Dáil cabinet secretarial staff at the Mansion House, where she continues to work in the publicity department. She travels as Griffith’s private secretary to London as part of the Irish delegation to the treaty negotiations in October 1921. She is an admirer of both Griffith and Collins and is a firm supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. She works as Griffith’s secretary until just before his death and also does some secretarial work for Collins during the negotiations. One of her sisters is anti-Treaty, and she later recalls that she lost friends due to her support of the treaty.
McKenna marries Vittorio Napoli in 1931. He is a captain, and later a general, in the Italian royal grenadier guards. They meet when she is on holiday in Italy in 1927. For the first five years of their marriage, they live in the port of Derna in Cyrenaica, Libya, while her husband is stationed there. A son and daughter are born there. From September 1939 to June 1940, the family lives in Albania, but after Italy enters World War II, she and the children move to Viterbo. Her husband is taken prisoner in Greece in September 1943, and is detained in Germany and Poland. He returns to Italy in September 1945. Viterbo had been heavily bombed, and after Allied troops arrive, McKenna works as a translator and gives English language lessons to support her family. Her husband remains in the army, and they remain in Viterbo until 1956, later moving to Rome.
After the war, McKenna writes articles for the Irish Independent and other publications from Ireland, the United States and New Zealand, including The Irish Press, Irish Travel, Standard, Word, and Writer’s Digest. Sometimes she writes under her own name, as well as her pen name Kayn or Kayen MacKay. As the wives of Italian officers do not traditionally work, the money she earns from this is kept for travel and other leisure activities. This money allows her to visit her family in Ireland in 1947 for the first time since 1932. After their retirement, she and her husband visit Ireland regularly, and travel around Italy.
McKenna applies for an Irish military pension in 1950/51 and 1970, receiving references in support of her claim from Gallagher. As she had not served in a military organisation, her claims are rejected. As an Irish War of Independence veteran, she is awarded free travel in 1972, which is later extended to her husband. In her later years, she becomes concerned about the inaccuracies in the history around the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. She gives two talks to Radio Éireann in 1951, speaking about her time with the Irish Bulletin. Copies of these recordings are now held by the Bureau of Military History. During her lifetime, extracts of her memoir are published in the Capuchin Annual and The Irish Times. She drafted and redrafted these memoirs from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. A version edited by her daughter and niece is published in 2014 as A Dáil girl’s revolutionary recollections.
McKenna dies on March 22, 1988, in Rome. She is buried with an Irish flag which she had kept with her. A large collection of her papers is held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). In 2010, 2011 and 2016, some of her memorabilia is sold in Dublin.
In 1970, McKeown becomes a reporter for The Irish Times, then later works for The Irish Press, as their Belfast correspondent. Given his experience of reporting on the emergence of The Troubles, he supports the 1976 creation of “Women for Peace,” a Northern Ireland-based movement, by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. When his involvement becomes more widely known, the movement changes its name to “Community of Peace People,” or simply “Peace People.” After the events of 1976-77, he finds it difficult to return to full-time journalism.
Although McKeown becomes known as a thoughtful and calm presence in the leadership of the organisation, his criticisms of the reluctance of church authorities to speak out on sectarian issues causes some tensions. Corrigan and Williams win the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize, but he is not made a party to it. However, the Ford Foundation makes a grant to the group, which includes a salary for him, enabling him to become full-time editor of Peace by Peace, the group’s newspaper, also completing a year as editor of Fortnight in 1977.
McKeown, Corrigan and Williams all step down from the leadership posts in 1978, although he continues to edit Peace by Peace. His articles bring him into conflict with the group’s new leadership, while financial disagreements massively reduce the group’s membership. Ultimately, his belief that the group should call for special status for paramilitary prisoners leads to a split, with Williams and her leading supporter, Peter McLachlan, resigning in February 1980. He can no longer survive on the group’s salary, nor can he find work as a journalist, so he retrains as a typesetter.
In 1984, McKeown publishes his autobiography, The Passion of Peace. This is almost immediately withdrawn following a claim that it libels a journalist, although it is later reissued with an additional note.
In addition to his activism and his work in journalism, McKeown is deeply involved in the Belfast theater scene. He serves in a number of offices, including executive secretary and chairman, at the city’s renowned Lyric Theatre.
McKeown dies peacefully at his home in Belfast on September 1, 2019, following a battle with cancer.
Anne Harris, the former editor of the Sunday Independent, is born on August 25, 1947. She is the former wife of Eoghan Harris who was an opinion columnist for the newspaper. Her daughter, Constance Harris, writes for the newspaper as a fashion writer.
In 1972, Harris writes a controversial article defending the 1972 Aldershot Bombing, an article she later expresses regret for. She also works for The Irish Press, as well as the political magazine Hibernia and the fashion magazine Image.
Harris lives with Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning until his death on January 17, 2012. On February 5, 2012, the Sunday Independent announces that she will succeed Fanning as the publication’s editor.
On the evening of Saturday, July 19, 2014, group editor of INM newspaper publishers, Stephen Rae, orders the presses to be stopped to amend a column written by Harris, the Sunday Independent editor, which features references to Denis O’Brien. Copies of the original article do however appear, allowing comparisons between the two. Harris originally writes: “Denis O’Brien is the major shareholder in INM. In theory, with 29% of the shares, he does not control it. In practice, he does.” Rae has the last sentence deleted. She also writes: “The question is whether he understands newspapers. In order to confront the truths in our society, we must have a free press. With the restrictive charter for journalists proposed last year, and some garrotive (sic) new structures, Denis O’Brien does not make this easy.” This is changed to: “The question is whether he understands newspapers. In order to confront the truths in our society, we must have a free press. If the restrictive charter for journalists proposed last year, along with some other structural changes, are anything to go by, it might be instructive for him to listen to journalists, troublesome and all as they are.“
Harris leaves the newspaper some months later, with The Irish Times noting her departing speech to staff as follows: “She is understood to have spoken only about journalists and journalism and not about newspapers and their owners, a subject matter she has previously addressed in several columns.”
Mac Thomáis comes from a staunch Republican family. He is born Edward Patrick Thomas in the Dublin suburb of Rathmines on January 13, 1927. His father, a fire-brigade officer, dies when he is five years old and his family moves to Goldenbridge, Inchicore. He leaves school at thirteen to work as delivery boy for White Heather Laundry, learning Dublin neighbourhoods with great thoroughness. He says he found work to help his mother pay the rent. He later works as a clerk, and is appointed credit controller for an engineering firm.
At the November 1959 Ardfheis Mac Thomáis is elected to the Ardchomhairle of Sinn Féin, and edits and contributes to the Sinn Féin newspaper The United Irishman. He is a close friend of Tomás Mac Giolla and is deeply affected by the 1970 split in Sinn Féin. He takes the Provisional side, opposing Mac Giolla.
Mac Thomáis takes over as editor of An Phoblacht in 1972. In July 1973, he is arrested and charged with IRA membership at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin. He refuses to recognise the court but he gives a lengthy address from the dock. The following month he is sentenced to 15-months imprisonment. Within two months of completing his sentence he is again before the court on the same charge and again receives a 15-month sentence. Editors of six left-wing and Irish-language journals call for his release, as do a number of writers, and hundreds attend protest meetings – to no avail. He serves his full sentence.
Tim Pat Coogan, editor of The Irish Press, claims the charges against Mac Thomáis are politically motivated to a large degree as his activities are confined strictly to the newspaper An Phoblacht. Under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, due to his membership in Sinn Féin in the 1970s he is removed from his position in making some of the RTÉ historical programmes. As a historian he makes numerous contributions to various historical publications such as the Dublin Historical Review.
From 1974 Mac Thomáis writes a number of books on old Dublin. They sell well and remain in print for over 20 years. He also starts a number of walking tours of Dublin, which prove very popular.
(Robert John) Douglas Gageby, one of the pre-eminent Irish newspaper editors of his generation, dies on June 24, 2004, following a lengthy illness. His life is well documented and a book of essays about him, Bright Brilliant Days: Douglas Gageby and the Irish Times, written by many of his colleagues, some of whom had attained fame for their literary achievements, is published in 2006.
Gageby is educated at Belfast Royal Academy and Trinity College Dublin, where he is elected a scholar in Modern Languages (French and German) in 1940. He is also actively involved with the student newspaper, Trinity News. He enlists in the Irish Army as a private soldier at the outbreak of World War II. He is commissioned later, and he serves as an intelligence officer. He reports from post-war Germany for The Irish Press and goes on to work under Conor Cruise O’Brien in the Irish News Agency. In 1954 he is the first editor of the Evening Press. In 1963 he becomes editor of The Irish Times, a post he holds until 1986, having been brought back from a short retirement in 1974. He is credited with moving The Irish Times from a Unionist organ into a successful Irish journal of record.
In 2003 it is revealed that a director, and later Chairman, of The Irish Times, Major Thomas Bleakley McDowell, had referred to Gageby as a “white nigger” for his views and role in the paper during the Northern Ireland civil rights movement‘s campaign in the 1960s. The comment appears in a letter from the British Ambassador to Dublin, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, to Kelvin White, head of the Irish Section of the British Foreign Office and is dated October 2, 1969. Gilchrist is referring to conversations which he had with McDowell where the latter professes himself to be fully behind the British government in the North and hostile to Gageby’s coverage of the civil rights movement. However, historian Mark O’Brien notes, “Despite his contacts with London, McDowell’s actions did not interfere with Gageby’s editorials on Northern Ireland”, due to the fact McDowell believes in editorial independence (even though McDowell strongly disagrees with Gageby’s nationalist views), and because Gageby is making the newspaper commercially successful. Under the 30 year rule, this letter is made available to newspapers on December 22 and 23, 1999, but no newspaper publishes it at that time.
The communiqué is later discovered by the historian Jack Lane and published in the Irish Political Review, a small magazine strongly antagonistic to The Irish Times, in January 2003. He brings it to the attention of The Irish Times editor, Geraldine Kennedy, on January 10, 2003, and she replies on January 15, 2003 saying she is “unable to confirm the veracity of it” and does not publish it. When, on January 26, 2003, the Sunday Independent (Ireland) publishes the story, The Irish Times finally follows the next day, January 27. Nonetheless, on April 24, 2004, Kennedy defends her position by saying, “The contents of the letter in question were published on January 27, 2003, as soon as its existence was drawn to my attention.”
Gageby dies on June 24, 2004, following a two year illness. His private funeral is conducted by Rev. Terence McCaughey, a family friend. The Irish Times endows an annual Douglas Gageby Fellowship for young journalists and a stand of trees is planted in his memory at Moynalty. His papers are presented to Dublin City University (DCU).
Paul McGuinness, the founder of Principle Management Limited, a popular music act management company based in Dublin, is born on June 16, 1951, in Rinteln, Westphalia, Germany. He is the manager of the rock band U2 from 1978 to 2013.
McGuinness is born in a British military hospital at Rinteln where his father, Philip McGuinness, a native of Liverpool, is serving with the Royal Air Force. His mother, Sheila McGuinness (née Lyne), is a schoolteacher from County Kerry. There are three children in the family: Paul, Niall, and Katy.
McGuinness receives his early formal education in Ireland at the private Jesuit boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. From there he goes on to Trinity College Dublin, where he directs plays, edits the magazine T.C.D. Miscellany, and promotes gigs, but drops out before obtaining a degree.
Before becoming involved with U2, Guinness works as a film assistant director on productions such as John Boorman‘s Zardoz. For a time, he also manages folk-rock group Spud.
McGuinness first meets U2 at a Dublin gig on May 25, 1978, where they are supporting the Gamblers. Following this meeting, he becomes U2’s manager, having been introduced to the band by Bill Graham, a journalist with Hot Press magazine. His original agreement with the band is that the money is to be split equally five ways, though this is later changed.
McGuinness founds Principle Management Limited on March 29, 1984. He and Bill Whelan set up a music publishing company called McGuinness/Whelan Publishing in the late 1980s. Whelan later composes the music for the theatrical show Riverdance.
In 2002, McGuinness is presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Music Awards at the Point Theatre in Dublin and U2 wins the best Irish Band Award.
Noted for his business acumen, McGuinness is responsible for U2 3D concert films, U2-branded iPods, sponsorship from BlackBerry and the first-ever concert streamed live on YouTube.
McGuinness is regarded as the fifth member of U2, although in an interview with The Irish Press in 1985, when asked if he is the fifth member of U2, he replies, “The fifth member of U2 is in Adam (Clayton)‘s trousers.” He is also regarded as one of the most successful managers in the music business.
McGuinness steps down as manager of U2 after 34 years on November 13, 2013, with Madonna‘s manager, Guy Oseary, succeeding him in 2014 when he sells Principle Management Limited to Live Nation.
McGuinness is a founding partner of TV3 (Ireland) and is one of the owners of Ardmore Film Studios. He becomes a member of the Arts Council of Ireland on January 1, 1988, having been appointed by Charles Haughey. He serves until February 2000 when he resigns.
McGuinness has been an advocate on behalf of artists, record labels, and music publishers. On January 28, 2008, in a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, he specifically accuses companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook of building “multi-billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it.”
In 2015, McGuinness founds Primo Productions, a film and TV company. Primo produces three seasons of Riviera, a drama set in the South of France. He writes the “list of ingredients” for the show: “Rich people behaving badly in the sun, yachts, Maseratis, great clothes, beautiful women, art fraud, money laundering through the auction houses, Russians, English people, American, French. Murder, adultery.” Everyday life on the Côte d’Azur. His production partner is Kris Thykier of Archery Pictures. The show is originally commissioned by Anne Mensah of Sky Atlantic.
McGuinness marries Kathy Gilfillan in 1977. They meet while he is studying at Trinity. Gilfillan is director of The Lilliput Press. They have two children.
Nicholas “Nicky” Rackard, Irish hurler whose league and championship career with the Wexford senior team spans seventeen years from 1940 to 1957, is born on April 28, 1922, in Killanne, County Wexford. He establishes many championship scoring records, including being the top championship goal-scorer of all time with 59 goals. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest hurlers in the history of the game.
Rackard is the eldest son of five boys and four girls born to Robert (Bob) Rackard and Anastasia Doran, who had been married in 1918. He is introduced to sport by his father who had hoped he would become a cricketer. His uncle, John Doran, won an All-Ireland medal as a Gaelic footballer with Wexford in 1918 and it is hurling and Gaelic football that Rackard develops a talent for.
Rackard plays his club hurling with his local Rathnure club and enjoys much success. He wins his first senior county title in 1948. It was Rathnure’s first ever championship triumph. Two years later in 1950 he captures a second county title, a victory which allows him to take over the captaincy of the county senior team for the following year. He wins his third and final county medal in 1955.
Rackard makes his debut on the inter-county scene when he is selected for the Wexford minor panel. He is just out of the minor grade when he is selected for the Wexford senior team in 1940. Over the course of the next seventeen years, he wins two All-Ireland medals as part of the Wexford hurling breakthrough in 1955 and 1956. He also wins four Leinster Senior Hurling Championship medals, one National Hurling League medal and one Leinster Senior Football Championship medal as a Gaelic footballer. He plays his last game for Wexford in August 1957.
By the late 1940s, Rackard is a regular in the full-forward line on the Leinster inter-provincial team. Success comes in the twilight of his career and he claims his sole Railway Cup medal in 1956.
Rackard’s brothers, Billy and Bobby, also experience All-Ireland success with Wexford.
In retirement from playing Rackard becomes involved in team management and coaching. It is with the Wexford senior team that he enjoys his greatest successes as a selector when he helps the team secure the 1968 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship title.
Rackard is most famous for his scoring prowess and is the all-time top championship scorer at the time of his retirement from hurling. His private life is marred by periods of excessive drinking, which had started during his university studies, and eventually develops into alcoholism. After quitting drinking completely in 1970, he travels the country as a counsellor with Alcoholics Anonymous. In an interview in The Irish Press in 1975, he details his life as a recovering alcoholic and becomes one of the first sportspeople to break the taboo of alcoholism in Ireland.
Rackard death from cancer at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on April 10, 1976, sees a huge outpouring of grief amongst the hurling community. He is posthumously honoured by being named on the Hurling Team of the Century in 1984, however, he is sensationally omitted from the Hurling Team of the Millennium in favour of Ray Cummins. His scoring prowess has also earned him a place on the top ten list of all-time scoring greats. In 2005 the GAA further honours him by naming the Nicky Rackard Cup, the hurling competition for Division 3 teams, in his honour.
In 2006, a Wexford author, Tom Williams, writes a long-overdue biography of Rackard entitled Cuchulainn’s Son – The Story of Nickey Rackard. The same author also pens a now well-known song about Rackard many years earlier. It too is called Cuchulainn’s Son and has been recorded by various artists over the last 20 years and is a lament for the great sportsman.
In Wexford town, there is a statue to commemorate Rackard, erected in 2012.
Ó Dálaigh, one of four children, is born on February 12, 1911, in Bray, County Wicklow. His father, Richard O’Daly, is a fishmonger with little interest in politics. His mother is Una Thornton. His birth name is registered in English as Carroll O’Daly, which he uses during his legal career, and which is recorded by some publications.
Ó Dálaigh is a committed Fianna Fáil supporter who serves on the party’s National Executive in the 1930s. He becomes Ireland’s youngest Attorney General in 1946, under TaoiseachÉamon de Valera, serving until 1948. Unsuccessful in Dáil and Seanad elections in 1948 and 1951, he is re-appointed as Attorney General of Ireland in 1951. In 1953, he is nominated as the youngest-ever member of the Supreme Court by his mentor, de Valera. Less than a decade later, he becomes Chief Justice of Ireland, on the nomination of Taoiseach Seán Lemass. He is a keen actor in his early years, and becomes a close friend of actor Cyril Cusack. It is commonly stated that Ó Dálaigh and Cusack picketed the Dublin launch of Disney‘s Darby O’Gill and the Little People in 1959, for what they felt was the film’s stereotyping of Irish people. However, there is no known contemporary reference to this having occurred.
In 1972, Taoiseach Jack Lynch suggests to the opposition parties that they agree to nominate Ó Dálaigh to become President of Ireland when President de Valera’s second term ends in June of the following year. Fine Gael, confident that its prospective candidate, Tom O’Higgins, will win the 1973 presidential election, having almost defeated de Valera in 1966, turn down the offer. Fianna Fáil’s Erskine H. Childers goes on to win the election that follows.
When Ireland joins the European Economic Community (EEC), Lynch appoints Ó Dálaigh as Ireland’s judge on the European Court of Justice. When President Childers dies suddenly in 1974, all parties agree to nominate Ó Dálaigh to replace him.
Ó Dálaigh’s tenure as president proves to be contentious. While popular with Irish language speakers and with artists, and respected by many republicans, he has a strained relationship with the Government of the 20th Dáil, particularly with Minister Conor Cruise O’Brien and Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave.
Ó Dálaigh’s decision in 1976 to exercise his power to refer a bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality brings him into conflict with the Fine Gael-Labour National Coalition. Following the assassination of the British Ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), on July 23, 1976, the government announces its intention to introduce legislation extending the maximum period of detention without charge from two to seven days.
Ó Dálaigh refers the resulting bill, the Emergency Powers Bill, to the Supreme Court. When the court rules that the bill is constitutional, he signs the bill into law on October 16, 1976. On the same day, an IRA bomb in Mountmellick, County Laois, kills Michael Clerkin, a member of the Garda Síochána, the country’s police force. Ó Dálaigh’s actions are seen by government ministers to have contributed to the killing of this Garda. On the following day, Minister for DefencePaddy Donegan, visiting a barracks in Mullingar, County Westmeath, to open a canteen, attacks the President for sending the bill to the Supreme Court, calling him a “thundering disgrace.”
Ó Dálaigh’s private papers show that he considered the relationship between the President (as Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces) and the Minister for Defence had been “irrevocably broken” by the comments of the Minister in front of the army Chief of Staff and other high-ranking officers. Donegan offers his resignation, but Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave refuses to accept it. This proves the last straw for Ó Dálaigh, who believes that Cosgrave had additionally failed to meet his constitutional obligation to regularly brief the President. He resigns from the presidency on October 22, 1976, “to protect the dignity and independence of the presidency as an institution.” He is succeeded as President of Ireland by Patrick Hillery.
Ó Dálaigh dies of a heart attack on March 21, 1978, less than two years after resigning the presidency. He is buried in Sneem, County Kerry.
Ó hEithir’s parents are national school teachers, Pádraic Ó hEithir and Delia Ní Fhlaithearta. He is a nephew of Aran Islands authors Liam Ó Flaithearta and Tom Maidhc Ó Flaithearta, the brothers of his mother. He attends the Kilronan national school where his parents teach. He receives his secondary school education at Coláiste Éinde (St. Enda’s College), Galway. He attends University College Galway for three years, finishing his university course in 1952 but leaves without sitting his final examinations. He writes in both Irish and English and is highly regarded for the originality and liveliness of his journalism, especially his work in Irish.
Ó hEithir marries Catherine von Hildebrand, a young student recently arrived in Dublin from Colombia, in 1957 and they have five children: Ruairí, Máirín, Brian, Aindriú, and Rónán. Catherine is born in Paris, the daughter of Deirdre Mulcahy from Sligo and Franz von Hildebrand from Munich, son of the noted philosopher and theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand.
After college, Ó hEithir spends a number of years working as an itinerant bookseller for Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge. He serves as an editor at Sáirséal agus Dill, the Irish language publishing house, and as Irish language editor for The Irish Press from 1957 to 1963. He also writes a column for The Sunday Press. He is a regular columnist with the journal Comhar and also contributes a weekly column to The Irish Times. He also serves as a staff journalist with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), working on the current affairs programmes Cúrsaí and Féach.
In 1975 the Irish American Cultural Institute awards Ó hEithir a scholarship of £2,000 to allow him to devote more time to writing. The following year his first novel, Lig sinn i gcathú (1976), loosely based on his student days in Galway, becomes a best-seller. He and Catherine move to Paris in 1986, where most of his second novel, Sionnach ar mo Dhuán (1988), is written. Hopes of having produced his definitive novel are soon dashed by a series of devastating reviews.
Ó hEithir visits Colombia with his wife in the summer of 1990. On his return, he is presented with the Butler literary award of $10,000 in further recognition of his writing in Irish. A month later, after a very short illness, he dies of cancer in St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin on October 26, 1990. He is survived by his wife, Catherine, daughter Máirín, and sons Ruairí, Brian, and Aindriú.
seamus dubhghaill 