Special fund for Rising relatives wound up in 1977

A little-known fund for relatives of participants in the 1916 Rising and War of Independence was quietly wound up in 1977, according to files released by the National Archives.

The Special Relief Fund, which had several names over the decades, began in 1921 when Michael Collins told a closed session of the Dáil that £15,000 had been collected by a Larry Ginnell in Chicago to be used in "relief in any special way the Dáil wished".

A later memo said it was "primarily intended" to cover only "necessitous cases of distress attributable to the period 1919/21".

Collins, then minister for finance, was one of the fund's original trustees.

A list in the file shows that some payments were as low as £3, while a small number reached £100. Names such as Connolly, Brugha and Mellows feature in the list of disbursements.

James Connolly's daughter received £10, while Dan Breen's sister-in-law got £65.

The fund was boosted in 1941 when the First and Second National Bank and Trust Company of Oswego, New York, found an account in the name of Éamon de Valera, which had been opened in 1923 by "friends of the Irish Republican movement". It contained $1,333 when it was transferred to the relief fund in 1943.

Activity in the fund slowed in the following decades, and in 1977 it was suggested that the fund be wound up.

A Department of the Taoiseach official suggested that the balance of £261.32 be given to an organisation catering for Old IRA members.

A later note shows that the final payment was given to former Fianna Fáil TD and Irish Volunteer John McCann in July 1977. He was father of the actor Donal and was lord mayor of Dublin in 1964 as well as a playwright. Much of his work was performed by the Abbey company in its temporary home at the Queen's Theatre.

His plays included Blood Is Thicker Than Water, Early And Often, Give Me a Bed of Roses, A Jew Called Sammyand Twenty Years a-Wooing.

McCann died less than three years later aged 75.