ELECTED AS acting president at the first sitting of the first Dáil, Cathal Brugha was one of the heroes of the 1916 Rising. He was badly wounded in the fighting at the South Dublin Union (now St James’s Hospital).
Born in 1874 and registered at birth as Charles William St John Burgess, he was educated at Belvedere College but left school at 16 when his father’s business failed and became a clerk in a church supplies firm. He joined the Gaelic League in 1899 and became a lieutenant in the Irish Volunteers in 1913.
Brugha became chief of staff of the IRA in October, 1917, and was elected as a TD for Waterford in 1918.
With de Valera and other leading members of Sinn Féin in jail when the Dáil first met on January 21st, 1919, he was appointed acting president.
In April, when de Valera took over the top position, Brugha was appointed minister for defence. A bitter rivalry developed with Michael Collins during the following two years and Brugha voted against the Treaty.
He took part in the fierce fighting in Dublin that marked the beginning of the Civil War in June of 1922 and was badly wounded in an engagement with pro-Treaty forces on July 5th. He died from his wounds two days later.
THE DOMINATING political figure of 20th-century Ireland, de Valera was unable to attend the first sitting of the Dáil as he was in Lincoln Jail. After his escape two months later, he was unanimously elected president.
Born in New York in 1882 to an Irish mother and a Spanish father, de Valera spend most of his childhood with his grandparents in Bruree, Co Limerick.
He joined the Gaelic League in 1908, the Volunteers in 1913 and was commandant at Boland’s Mills in 1916. His rise to leadership of the independence movement came with his victory in the Clare by-election of 1917 and his subsequent emergence as president of an expanded Sinn Féin.
After his election as president of the Dáil, he went on a mission to the US to seek recognition of an Irish Republic and raise funds. He didn’t return to Ireland for almost 18 months.
De Valera was instrumental in setting up the talks which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, but did not take part himself. He opposed the Treaty agreed by Collins and Griffith and supported the Republican side in the subsequent Civil War. After founding Fianna Fáil in 1926, he was elected to government in 1932 and was in office until 1959, with the exception of six years (1948-51, 1954-57). He was elected president of Ireland in 1959 and re-elected in 1966.
COLLINS HAS gone down in history as a swashbuckling IRA leader, instrumental in the establishment of an independent Ireland.
Born near Clonakilty in Co Cork, he got a job in London at the age of 16. He went to Dublin to take part in the Rising, but it was in prison afterwards that he began to make his mark in the republican movement.
Elected in 1918, he was appointed minister for home affairs at the first Dáil and promoted to finance when de Valera assumed the leadership three months later.
As minister for finance, Collins was spectacularly successful in floating the official loans that enabled the Dáil to function. As director of organisation and intelligence for the Volunteers, he played a vital role in directing a ruthless campaign of violence, in tandem with the Dáil’s activities.
He was a leading member of the delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December, 1921, and became chairman of the Provisional Government when de Valera and his supporters withdrew from government.
In June of 1922 he became commander-in-chief of the army and launched the attack on the Four Courts that began the Civil War.
He was shot dead in an ambush by republicans at Béal na mBláth two months later.
MACNEILL WAS appointed to the cabinet at the first meeting of the Dáil, despite having attempted to prevent the 1916 Rising.
He was born in Co Antrim and educated at St Malachy’s College and the Royal University. His primary interests were Irish language and history and he was one of the founders of the Gaelic League in 1893. In 1908, on the establishment of the National University of Ireland, he was appointed professor of early Irish history at UCD.
MacNeill founded the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was opposed to an armed rising unless it had realistic prospects of success. When he discovered the Irish Republican Brotherhood conspiracy to send the Volunteers into action on Easter Sunday, 1916, he issued a countermanding order, but the Rising went ahead. MacNeill was arrested afterwards and sentenced to life in prison.
He was elected in 1918 for the NUI, appointed as minister for finance on the first day of the Dáil and moved to industry in April. He supported the Treaty and was an influential figure in the first Free State government. Appointed to the Boundary Commission, he was made the scapegoat for its failure and resigned from cabinet. He lost his Dáil seat in the 1927 election.
COUNTESS MARKIEVICZ (1868-1927)
ELECTED IN 1918, she was one of two women elected to the House of Commons in the first election at which women were permitted to stand and vote. She was appointed minister for labour by de Valera in April 1918. Another woman would not be appointed to the cabinet for over 60 years.
Born in Sligo, she was presented at the court of Queen Victoria in 1887. Wishing to be a painter, she lived in London and Paris in the 1890s and in 1900 married the Polish-Ukranian Count Casimir Markievicz.
The couple settled in Dublin in 1903 and she became involved with the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin. In 1909 she founded Fianna Éireann, an organisation that taught boys, many of whom later took part in the 1916 Rising, how to use weapons.
A supporter of Jim Larkin during the 1913 lockout in Dublin, she took a prominent part in the Rising. Appointed to the cabinet in April, 1919, she was demoted in a reshuffle just a few months later. She opposed the Treaty and lost her Dáil seat in the election of June, 1922, widely interpreted as a plebiscite on the agreement.
Re-elected in 1923, she joined Fianna Fáil on its foundation in 1926 and was returned to the Dáil in the first election of 1927. She died shortly afterwards.
THE LEADER of independent Ireland for the first 10 years of its existence, Cosgrave was one of the most experienced politicians in the first Dáil. Born in Dublin, he took part in the foundation of Sinn Féin in 1905.
He was elected to Dublin City Council in 1909. He joined the Volunteers in 1913 and took part in the Rising, serving in the South Dublin Union (St James’s Hospital). Jailed afterwards, he was released in the general amnesty of 1917, won a by-election in Kilkenny city in August 1917 and was elected in 1918.
Unable to attend the first meeting of the Dáil as he was in jail, Cosgrave was appointed minister for local government when de Valera took over in April, 1919. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December 1921, three of the seven- member cabinet supported it and three were opposed. Cosgrave’s position was crucial but he supported Griffith and the cabinet voted four- three in favour. The Dáil followed suit on an equally tight margin of 64 to 57.
When Griffith and Collins died in August, 1922, Cosgrave took over as leader of government. He remained leader for the first 10 years of the State’s existence. In 1932, Fianna Fáil won, and de Valera took power.
BORN IN Dublin and educated by the Christian Brothers, Griffith trained as a printer and joined the Gaelic League and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He went to South Africa in 1896 but returned two years later to edit a new weekly paper, the United Irishman.
In it he developed a policy advocating that Irish MPs withdraw from Westminster and establish a national assembly in Ireland with recognition of the crown, on the Hungarian model. In 1905 he expounded this policy and launched a political party called Sinn Féin, which emphasised self-reliance and passive resistance to British rule.
While Griffith supported the establishment of the Volunteers, he was not involved in the 1916 Rising. He was jailed, nonetheless, as the British associated Sinn Féin with the armed rebellion.
The party became the umbrella body for a broad front that favoured Irish independence and Griffith stood down as president in favour of de Valera. He was elected for East Cavan in 1918 and appointed minister for home affairs and vice president of the Dáil in April, 1918.
He was acting president during de Valera’s trip to the US. Chosen by the Dáil to lead the negotiating team with the British government in 1921, he signed the Treaty, subsequently replaced de Valera and headed the first provisional government of the Irish Free State. His early death in 1922 was attributed to the strain imposed by the outbreak of Civil War.
ELECTED CEANN comhairle of the first Dáil, O’Kelly was to play a prominent part in Irish politics for the following 40 years. Born in Dublin and educated by the Christian Brothers, he joined the Gaelic League in 1898 and was subsequently sworn into the IRB.
A founding member of Sinn Féin in 1905, he was elected to Dublin City Council the following year and campaigned for social reform during his 21 years on the council. He fought in the GPO in 1916 and was interned afterwards.
Elected in 1918, he was elected ceann comhairle and accredited as the envoy of the Dáil to the peace conference in Paris. He failed to win recognition from the victorious powers in the first World War, not least because of the association between the Irish independence movement and imperial Germany.
O’Kelly opposed the Treaty and supported de Valera, becoming a founding member of Fianna Fáil in 1926. He was appointed minister for local government and deputy leader of government by de Valera on Fianna Fáil’s accession to power in 1932.
He was appointed minister for finance in 1941 and in 1945 was elected second president of Ireland. He served a second term from 1952 to 1959 and addressed a joint session of the US Congress during his last year in office.
BORN IN Waterford, he was educated by the Christian Brothers and worked in the postal service in Thurles. He joined the Volunteers in 1913 and was second-in- command to Thomas Ashe in the engagement at Ashbourne in 1916.
Jailed after the Rising, he became the chief of staff of the IRA after his release the following year and was elected in 1918 for Clontarf. Appointed minister for defence at the first Dáil, he was replaced by Brugha in the reshuffle after de Valera’s release.
Mulcahy supported the Treaty and took command of the government forces after the death of Collins. He was minister for defence from 1923-1924, but resigned during the army mutiny after clashes with Kevin O’Higgins. He returned to the cabinet in 1927 as minister for local government and in 1944 became leader of Fine Gael after WT Cosgrave retired. His decision not to insist that, as Fine Gael leader, he should be the party’s candidate for taoiseach in 1948 facilitated the creation of the first coalition government.
He served as minister for education in that government between 1948 and 1951, and again between 1954 and 1957. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Irish language and connected by marriage to two leading Fianna Fáil politicians, Jim Ryan and Sean T O’Kelly.
BORN GEORGE Noble in Dublin and made a Papal count as a young man, he was the father of executed 1916 leader, Joseph Mary Plunkett. He was elected to the House of Commons on an abstentionist ticket at a by-election in Roscommon North in February, 1917.
Plunkett spent much of his early adult years abroad studying in Nice and Italy. He was made a Papal count in 1877 mainly in recognition of building work done for the Papacy.
He was curator of the National Museum from 1907-1916 but his interest in politics came from his sons, Joseph, George and John. The execution of Joseph in 1916 radicalised Plunkett and he was sworn in as a member of the IRB. He stood in a by-election in 1917, representing a broad front of nationalist organisations but allegedly had to be persuaded not to take his seat at Westminster.
Elected again in 1918, he was appointed minister for foreign affairs at the first meeting of the Dáil but his influence declined once de Valera and Griffith took control of political developments and he was eased out of the cabinet.
He was anti-Treaty during the Civil War and retained his seat as an abstentionist Republican. He did not join Fianna Fáil when de Valera broke with Sinn Féin in 1926. He stood for Sinn Féin in the first election of 1927 but lost his seat.
