Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Fintan Coogan Sr.

Fintan Coogan (13 April 1910 – 4 November 1984) was a Fine Gael politician from Galway in Ireland. A blacksmith before entering politics, he was a Teachta Dála (TD) for over twenty years, and served three times as Mayor of Galway.

Coogan unsuccessfully contested the 1951 general election in the Galway West constituency, but won a seat in Dáil Éireann at the 1954 general election. He was re-elected five times until his defeat at the 1977 general election by his party colleague John Mannion.

A long-serving member of both Galway County Council and Galway City Council, Coogan served as mayor of Galway city from 1961 to 1962, 1969 to 1970 and 1974 to 1975. He was a member of the Western Health Board from 1979 until his death, when he was succeeded on the board by his son Fintan Coogan, Jnr, who was then both a TD and a county councillor, and also served several terms as Mayor of Galway.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Brendan M. Glynn

Brendan M. Glynn (6 January 1910 – 10 July 1986) was an Irish Fine Gael politician and solicitor who served as a Teachta Dála (TD), representing the Galway South constituency in Dáil Éireann.

He was educated at Garbally College. Glynn served one term following the 1954 general election, having previously unsuccessfully contested the Galway South by-election in August 1953. He did not stand at the 1957 general election.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - John O'Donovan

^{John O'Donovan}

John O'Donovan (1908 –17 May 1982) was an Irish politician. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South–East constituency at the 1954 general election. On his first day in the Dáil, O'Donovan was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Government.

He lost his seat at the 1957 general election, but was elected to Seanad Éireann by the Cultural and Educational Panel, where he served until 1961. He was unsuccessful candidate at the 1961 and 1965 general elections. Following the 1969 general election O'Donovan returned to the Dáil as a Labour Party deputy for Dublin South–Central. O'Donovan lost his seat again at the 1973 general election.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Celia Lynch

Celia Lynch (née Quinn; 6 May 1908 – 16 June 1989) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, Assistant Government Whip, and Teachta Dála (TD) for 23 years. She also served as a Dublin City Councillor for many years.

Her husband James B. Lynch was a TD and Senator from 1932 until his death in 1954. A housewife before entering politics, Lynch was elected to Dáil Éireann on her first attempt, as a Fianna Fáil candidate for the Dublin South–Central constituency at the 1954 general election, taking her seat in the 15th Dáil. She lived at 156 Botanic Road, Glasnevin.

She was re-elected at the next five general elections, before retiring from politics at the 1977 general election. Her birthplace, Duras House, Kinvara, County Galway, was where the Abbey Theatre was founded.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Thomas Aloysius Finlay

Thomas Aloysius Finlay (born 1922) is an Irish former Fine Gael politician and was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1985 to 1994. He is the second son of Thomas Finlay, a politician and senior counsel whose career was cut short by his early death in 1932.

He was educated at Clongowes Wood College, University College Dublin (UCD) and King's Inns. While in UCD, he was elected Auditor of the University College Dublin Law Society. He was called to the Bar in 1944 and to the Inner Bar in 1961. He was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South–Central constituency at the 1954 general election. He lost his seat at the 1957 general election.

In 1971, he was appointed a Judge of the High Court and was appointed President of the High Court in 1974. He served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1985 to 1994. He is a member of a legal family: his father and brother William were both Senior Counsels as is his son John; both his brother-in-law John Blayney and his son-in-law Hugh Geoghegan were judges of the Supreme Court (as was Hugh's father James Geoghegan ) and his daughter Mary Finlay Geoghegan is a judge of the High Court.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Richard Gogan

Richard Gogan (29 November 1899 – 28 April 1982) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. A home assistance officer, Gogan was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North–West constituency at the 1954 general election, having previously unsuccessfully contested the 1948 and 1951 general elections. Gogan held his seat at every subsequent election until he lost his seat at the 1977 general election in the new Dublin Cabra constituency.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Denis Larkin

^{Denis Larkin}

^{Denis Larkin (1908 – 2 July 1987) was an Irish Labour Party politician and trade union official. He was the son of Dublin trade union leader, James Larkin. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North–East constituency at the 1954 general election and was re-elected at the 1957 general election. He lost his seat at the 1961 general election but was re-elected at the 1965 general election. He did not contest the 1969 general election. He served as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1955 to 1956.}

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Maureen O'Carroll

^{Maureen O'Carroll}

Maureen O'Carroll (née McHugh; 29 March 1913 – 9 May 1984) was an Irish Labour Party politician who sat from 1954 to 1957 as Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin North–Central.

A school teacher and mother of ten children (including Brendan O'Carroll), O'Carroll was educated at University College Galway and entered politics as a founder of the Lower Prices Council, which campaigned against high prices, scarcity and black marketeering in the aftermath of World War II.

She was elected to Dáil Éireann on her first attempt, at the 1954 general election to the 15th Dáil, when she was the third candidate to be elected in the three-seat Dublin North–Central constituency, defeating sitting Fianna Fáil TD Colm Gallagher. She served as Labour's Chief Whip from 1954 to 1957.

At the 1957 general election, she was defeated and Gallagher retook the seat. O'Carroll did not stand again for election to the Dáil.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Edward Cotter

Edward Cotter (27 June 1902 – 11 December 1972) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He unsuccessfully contested the Cork West constituency June 1949 by-election caused by the death of Timothy J. Murphy but was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork West constituency at the 1954 general election. He moved to the Cork South–West at the 1961 general election and continued to hold his seat until he retired at the 1969 general election.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Tadhg Manley

Timothy (Tadhg) Manley (20 April 1893 – 24 August 1976) was an Irish Fine Gael politician. A teacher by profession, he was an unsuccessful candidate at the 1951 general election. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork South constituency at the 1954 general election. He was re-elected at the 1957 general election. He did not contest the 1961 general election.

His nephew Liam Burke was a Fine Gael TD and Senator from 1969 to 2002.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - John Moher

John W. Moher (7 February 1909 – 10 November 1985) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, auctioneer and farmer who was a member of Dáil Éireann representing the Cork East constituency. Having unsuccessfully contested the 1951 general election and a 1953 by-election, Moher was first elected as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork East constituency at the 1954 general election and held his seat – representing the Cork North–East from 1961 – until losing it at the 1965 general election.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Seán Casey

Seán Casey

Seán Casey (9 May 1922 – 29 April 1967) was an Irish Labour Party politician and trade union official. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork Borough constituency at the 1954 general election. He was re-elected at the 1957, 1961 and 1965 general elections. He died in April 1967 during the term of the 18th Dáil and the subsequent by-election held on 9 November 1967 was won by Seán French of Fianna Fáil.

He served as Lord Mayor of Cork on 3 separate occasions: in 1956, 1962 and 1966.

Members of the Fifteenth Dáil - Anthony Barry

Anthony Barry (7 June 1901 – 24 October 1983) was an Irish businessman and Fine Gael politician from Cork.

 He was born one of 11 children; his family had a small grocery business at Bridge Street in Cork. The firm specialised in teas and wines and later moved to Princes Street. It was awarded the Empire Cup for Tea Blending at the Grocers Exhibition London, 1934. He spent his working life at the firm which was later developed under the tutelage of his son Peter into a major company called Barry's Tea.

Barry acted as election agent for W. T. Cosgrave, the former President of the Executive Council who was a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork Borough from 1932 to 1944. Barry was elected to Dáil Éireann as TD for Cork Borough at the 1954 general election, but lost his seat at the 1957 general election and was then elected to the 9th Seanad on the Cultural and Educational Panel. He was re-elected to the Dáil at the 1961 general election, and served until a further defeat at the 1965 general election. He was also Lord Mayor of Cork from 1961 to 1962.


His son Peter Barry, his daughter Theresa (Terry) Kelly, neé Barry, and granddaughter Deirdre Clune were also politicians.

He had an interest in photography from an early age and in his 50s his skill developed and apart from taking photographs he developed them at his home in York Terrace.

Why De-Valera got a bum rap on being pro-Nazi because of US AmbassadorWhy De-Valera got a bum rap on being pro-Nazi because of US AmbassadorWhy De-Valera got a bum rap on being pro-Nazi because of US Ambassador

In IrishCentral.com, an article dated 4 November 2012, T. Ryle Dwyer writes:

 

While working on my doctorate in the early 1970s, I had access to the manuscript of a memoir written by David Gray, US Minister (Ambassador) to Ireland from 1940 to 1947.  It was so distorted, it was not worth publishing, but it has now been published by the Royal Irish Academy under the title, A Yankee in De Valera’s Ireland.

The files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime forerunner of the CIA, had not yet been released, so I wrote to David Bruce who had been in charge of the European theatre of the OSS during the war and had visited Dublin to discuss security matters in 1943.

His somewhat circumspect response provided clues between the lines.  He seemed to damn Gray with irrelevant praise.

“Mr. Gray — a fine man, and a great authority on foxhunting and sport, about which he had written delightfully and authoritatively — had no previous familiarity with secret intelligence activities, and was somewhat suspicious of them,” Bruce wrote. “If you can locate ‘Spike’ Marlin, you would find him especially knowledgeable about the affairs in which you are interested.”

“The Irish worked with us on intelligence matters almost as if they were our allies,” J. Russell Forgan, Bruce’s deputy, assured me. “They have never received the credit due them.”

The OSS initially selected “Spike” Marlin as agent-in-charge in Ireland. Born Irving Hirsch, into a poor Jewish family in New York City in 1909, he became a Protestant and formally changed his name to Ervin Ross Marlin in 1928.

After working his passage to Ireland the following year, he enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned a degree in Celtic Studies, before returning to the United States in 1932. He returned ten years later under the cover of an economic adviser at the American legation.

As Marlin’s reports were transmitted in the diplomatic pouch, Gray insisted on reading them.  One of the earliest reports noted that Irish Minister for Posts & Telegraphs Paddy Little was pro-German.  Gray demanded to know the source of this information.

Marlin reluctantly identified his source as junior minister Erskine Childers, a future President of Ireland. A few days later Marlin was confronted by an angry Childers, who told him that Gray had complained to the government about Little and went on to commit the appalling indiscretion of citing Childers as the source of the allegation.

Thereafter Marlin refused to divulge his sources, and relations with Gray became distinctly strained. 

The Irish quickly realized that Marlin was an OSS agent, and Joe Walshe, Secretary of the Irish Department of External Affairs, suggested that Irish security cooperate directly with Marlin.

The latter wished to avail of the offer, but Gray balked. Hence David Bruce visited Dublin to meet with Walshe and Irish security chiefs — Garda Commissioner Paddy O’Carroll, and Colonel Dan Bryan, head of G2 (Irish Military Intelligence). Bruce was convinced the Irish were serious about helping.  Gray wrote to Walshe that Bruce and was “hopeful that some mutually useful arrangement may come out of it.” But he added rather pointedly, “I am not responsible for Mr. Marlin.”

The Irish supplied Marlin with voluminous reports on IRA strength, radio interceptions, airplane and submarine sightings, the names and addresses of people in America to whom German nationals living in Ireland — or pro-German Irish people — were writing, and files on German spies already captured. The information was so detailed that the “Éire Desk” at OSS headquarters in Washington found it necessary to prepare over 4,000 index cards on the individuals mentioned in the reports.

The OSS had already sent another undercover agent to Ireland — Rowland Blenner-Hassett. He was able to dismiss stories of Nazi intrigue, so he felt he was wasting his time in Ireland, especially after the offer to cooperate with Marlin. “So long as the American Government secures all the information its desires about the activities of the IRA in Ireland, it is a matter of indifference how, or by whom, this object is achieved,” Blenner-Hassett argued. Gray wanted him out, too, so he was recalled.
Marlin’s cover as an adviser at the American legation was no longer needed.

“I was relieved of my assignment under Gray,” Marlin told me. “He wanted me out also so we were at last in perfect agreement on one point.”

From April 30, l943 onwards Marlin worked out of London and returned to Dublin only periodically. Between visits, the Irish forwarded material to him in London in the Irish diplomatic pouch.

A third undercover OSS agent, Martin S. Quigley, arrived in Ireland in May and quickly realized Irish authorities were favorably disposed towards the Allies. As a result he was baffled by Gray’s attitude. “He never knew what was really going on, or if he did, he refused to accept the truth,” Quigley concluded.

That summer while Gray was in the United States for consultations, Marlin suggested that the Irish would likely provide the OSS with information from their diplomats in Germany, Italy and France. Carter Nicholas, the head of the Éire Desk at OSS Headquarters in Washington, visited Dublin with Marlin in September 1943 and asked Joe Walshe for such help.

After clearing the matter with the Taoiseach, Walshe read Nicholas and Marlin extracts from messages describing conditions in Germany, Italy, and France. He also agreed to send Marlin future reports of interest.

In the following weeks Marlin supplied questions for Walshe to ask the Irish representatives in Berlin, Rome and Vichy. Walshe then forwarded their replies to Marlin. In effect, Irish diplomats were being used as American spies.

While in the United States Gray met personally with President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He tried to persuade them to invite de Valera to join the Allies. He assured them the Taoiseach would refuse, but London and Washington were not taking any chance of Ireland coming in the war. They also rejected Gray’s suggestion that they ask for Irish bases, as the service chiefs were convinced those would only be a liability.

However, Gray did eventually persuade them to ask for the removal of Axis diplomats from Dublin. The OSS and British Intelligence were satisfied with Irish security, but went along somewhat reluctantly with Gray’s political ploy.

De Valera’s refusal was used in the Allied press to depict him as unsympathetic to the Allied cause. The whole thing was just a political stunt.

After the success of the D-Day landings, Marlin returned to the United States, and the OSS decided to station Edward Lawler in Dublin as liaison with Irish Intelligence.

“We received 100% co-operation from the Irish authorities,” Lawler wrote to me. “The cooperation and information we received from the Irish was every bit as extensive and helpful as it would have been if Ireland had been a full partner with us in the war effort.”

Thus all of the OSS agents in Ireland believed the Irish were fully cooperative with the Allies, but Gray claimed he had “better sources of information.” In his memoir, he argued that de Valera and Walshe secretly schemed for a German victory in the hope that Hitler would end partition.

Of course, he did have different sources. A strong believer in spiritualism, Gray was getting advice from supposed ghosts and he was passing this information on to the White House.

Shortly after arriving in Dublin, he wrote to Roosevelt about “the memories and the ghosts that are here” in his official residence in Phoenix Park, where the late British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour had lived as Chief Secretary of Ireland in the 1880s. Balfour had engaged in séances with the writing medium Geraldine Cummins, would go into a kind of trance and write out messages from supposed ghosts. She began holding séances in the residence for Gray.

On November 8, 1941 Balfour’s ghost supposedly warned Gray about Joe Walshe. “He, from what I can see, is hand and glove with the German Minister,” the message read. “The organization of Fifth Columnists in this country is now complete.” Walshe, the message added, “is the leading
Quisling.”

At a further séance on December 2, 1941 Cummins produced a supposed message from the late President Theodore Roosevelt. “I want to tell you,” he supposedly wrote, “that I think Franklin will hold the Japs for a while; at any rate from our country’s point of view. I see no immediate Armageddon for young America, possibly not at all.”

This was the Tuesday before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, but Gray’s conviction that he was in touch with those ghosts was not shaken. “Four days after this communication,” Gray wrote to President Roosevelt, “the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. They had T.R. fooled. I suspect that if these communications come through pretty much as given our friends on the other side don’t know very much more than they did on this side.”

Gray later spent years writing his memoir but then he suddenly abandoned it around 1960, because, he said, the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt had advised him forget it.

*T. Ryle Dwyer is author of Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality During World War II, which is published in hardback and paperback by Gill & Macmillan.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Why-De-Valera-got-a-bum-rap-on-being-pro-Nazi-because-of-US-Ambassador-177156741.html#ixzz2BIQ9LQAK