Members of the Eleventh Dáil - Joseph Blowick

Joseph Blowick (13 March 1903 – 12 August 1970) was an Irish politician. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1943 as a Clann na Talmhan Teachta Dála (TD) for Mayo South. He succeeded Michael Donnellan as leader of the party in 1944. Blowick was appointed to the Cabinet in the two Inter-Party governments, serving under John A. Costello as Minister for Lands on both occasions. The cigar-smoking Blowick was elected to Dáil Éireann at every election until 1965 when he retired from politics.

Black Irish

As an American of Irish descent, I was told the term "Black Irish" to the Irish on the southeast coast of Ireland that intermingled with the Spanish during the time the Spanish Armada was fighting the British fleet. The Spanish supposedly used the southeast coast of Ireland as a base of operations. I never questioned the logic of that and still don't. However, I have learned that may not be true. The following is from an article in Irish Central:

Illustration of the "Shanty Irish" / "Black Irish" by F. Opper

The term 'Black Irish' has commonly been in circulation among Irish emigrants and their descendants for centuries. As a subject of historical discussion the subject is almost never referred to in Ireland. There are a number of different claims as to the origin of the term, none of which are possible to prove or disprove.

'Black Irish' is often a description of people of Irish origin who had dark features, black hair, dark complexion and eyes.

A quick review of Irish history reveals that the island was subject to a number of influxes of foreign people. The Celts arrived on the island about the year 500 B.C.

Whether or not this was an actual invasion or rather a more gradual migration and assimilation of their culture by the natives is open to conjecture, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that this later explanation is more likely.

The next great influx came from Northern Europe with Viking raids occurring as early as 795 A.D. The defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in the year 1014 by Brian Boru marked the end of the struggle with the invaders and saw the subsequent integration of the Vikings into Irish society. The migrants became 'Gaelicized' and formed septs (a kind of clan) along Gaelic lines.

The Norman invasions of 1170 and 1172 led by Strongbow saw yet another wave of immigrants settle in the country, many of whom fiercely resisted English dominance of the island in the centuries that followed. The Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century saw the arrival of English and Scottish colonists in Ulster after the 'Flight of the Earls'.

Each of these immigrant groups had their own physical characteristics and all, with the exception of the Ulster Planters, assimilated to some degree into Irish society, many claiming to be 'more Irish than the Irish themselves!'

The Vikings were often referred to as the 'dark invaders' or 'black foreigners'. The Gaelic word for foreigner is 'gall' and for black (or dark) is 'dubh'.

Many of the invaders families took Gaelic names that utilized these two descriptive words. The name Doyle is in Irish 'O'Dubhghaill' which literally means 'dark foreigner' which reveals their heritage as an invading force with dark intentions.

The name Gallagher is 'O Gallchobhair' which translates as 'foreign help'. The traditional image of Vikings is of pale-skinned blond-haired invaders but their description as 'dark foreigners' may lead us to conclude that their memory in folklore does not just depend on their physical description.

The Normans were invited into Ireland by Dermot McMurrough and were led by the famous Strongbow. Normans are ultimately of French origin where black haired people are not uncommon. As with the Vikings these were viewed as a people of 'dark intentions' who ultimately colonized much of the Eastern part of the country and several larger towns.

Many families however integrated into Gaelic society and changed their Norman name to Gaelic and then Anglo equivalents: the Powers, the Fitzpatricks, Fitzgeralds, Devereuxs, Redmonds.

According to Wikipedia:

Black Irish is an ambiguous term used mainly outside of Ireland. Over the course of history, and in different parts of the Irish diaspora throughout the world, it has been subject to several different although somewhat overlapping meanings, encompassing physical appearance, religious affiliation, ethnicity, subculture and poverty. Modern traditionalists, however, maintain the term to be synonymous with a dark-haired phenotype exhibited by certain individuals originally descended from Ireland. Opinions vary in regard to what is perceived as the usual physical characteristics of the so-called Black Irish: e.g., dark hair, brown eyes and medium skin tone; or dark hair, blue or green eyes and fair skin tone. Unbeknown to some who have used this term at one time or another, dark hair in people of Irish descent is extremely common, although darker skin complexions appear less frequently.

Early 21st century genetic studies have provided new insights into the origins of Irish people as well as their neighbours in the British Isles. Correspondingly, researchers in the field have suggested that migrations from Prehistoric Iberia (Spain, Portugal and also the Basque region) can be viewed as the primary source for their genetic material, having demonstrated marked similarities with modern representatives of the aforementioned time period in that of the Basque people. However, the majority of Irish males fall under the R1b sub-clade L-21, which is quite rare for Basques.

The first clear evidence of human habitation in Ireland has been carbon dated to about 7000 BC. Legends, such as those described in the Book of Invasions, refer to a number of pre-historical ethnic groups, including the Fomorians, Nemedians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha Dé Danann and Milesians. Despite the lack of empirical data linking them to the Irish, one or more of these races have been acknowledged in previous and current ancestral studies, such as Dennis O'Mullally's History of O'Mullally and Lally Clan, or The history of an Irish family through the ages intertwined with that of the Irish nation, wherein the author points to the Fir Bolg as "the aboriginal people of Ireland, smaller in stature than the Gaels, with jet-black hair and dark eyes, contrasting with unusually white skin."

The physical traits of the black Irish are sometimes thought to have been the result of an Iberian admixture originating with survivors of the Spanish Armada. Most Armada survivors were killed on the beaches, and many of the remnants eventually escaped from Ireland, but a group of Spanish soldiers ended up serving as armed retainers to the Irish chiefs Brian O'Rourke, Sorley Boy MacDonnell and Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone.

The genetic evidence is that the survivors of the Spanish Armada probably left no legacy, as the Irish have only minute amounts of Neolithic Italic Y chromosome genetic markers, such as G and J, which are present in trace levels throughout Spain. These results may be spurious as the Atlantic Modal Haplotype R1b is present in most Western European males including most Spanish and Irish males.

The Spanish Armada myth is thought to have been a corruption of a story based on the Milesians, the purported descendants of Míl Espáine (Latin Miles Hispaniae, "Soldier of Hispania", later pseudo-Latinised as "Milesius"), speculated to represent Celtic-speaking peoples from the western Iberian peninsula who began to migrate to Ireland and Britain in the fifth century B.C. Genetic research shows a strong similarity between the Y chromosome haplotypes of males from north-western Spain and northern Portugal and Irish men with Gaelic surnames. There is a significant difference between peoples of the west and the east of Ireland. Genetic marker R1b reaches frequencies as high as 98% in north-western Ireland and 95% in south-western Ireland, but drops to 73% in north-eastern Ireland and 85% in south-eastern Ireland. Additionally, R1b averages between 90% and 95% in Y chromosomes of the Basques of northern Spain (and south-western France), considerably greater than levels of the same haplogroup found amongst the remaining Spanish genepool, where it varies from region to region in a range from 42% to 75%, but mostly with percentages in the 50s and 60s.

In recently published books (Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes and The Origins of the British - A Genetic Detective Story by Stephen Oppenheimer), both authors propose that ancient inhabitants of Ireland can be traced back to the Iberian Peninsula, as a result of a series of migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and to a lesser extent the Neolithic Age. The Ice Age caused the depopulation of the British Isles. After glaciers retreated, the islands were populated by migrations from the Iberian Peninsula. These migrations laid the foundations for present-day populations in the British Isles, contributing three-quarters of the ancestral population, according to Oppenheimer. Later migrations of Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans appear to be much less significant in terms of genetic additions than previously thought. Oppenheimer maintains there is a great lineal commonality between the Irish and British people. He also advances the controversial claim that a language closely related to Basque was long ago spoken by their shared ancestors.

A similar theory was examined in the early 1980s by Bob Quinn with his trilogy of documentary films entitled Atlantean. He argued for the existence of a west Atlantic continuum of people, and linked the region of Connemara, in Ireland's West, with Iberian and Berber types who supposedly travelled from across the sea over a period spanning several thousand years.

C. Wesley Dupertuis conducted a survey of Irish people in the 1940s under the guidance of the Department of Anthropology of Harvard University, and gathered the following data.

The hair colour of the Irish is predominantly brown The most common Hair colour is dark brown. Less than 15% have black or ashen hair; 50% have dark brown hair. Medium brown hues make up another 15%. Persons with blond and light brown hair account for close to 5%, while approximately 10% have auburn or red hair. Both golden and dark brown shades can be seen in the south-western counties of Ireland, but fairest hair in general is most common in the Central Plain. Ulster has been evidenced to have the highest frequencies of red and blonde hair, with the lowest found in Wexford and Waterford.

Studies have indicated the Irish are "almost uniquely pale skinned when unexposed, untanned parts of the body, are observed" and "40% of the entire group are freckled to some extent." Moreover, "in the proportion of pure light eyes", data shows that "Ireland competes successfully with the blondest regions of Scandinavia", as approximately 42% of the Irish population have pure blue eyes. Another 30% have been found to possess light-mixed eyes and "less than 1 half of 1% have pure brown".

Members of the Eleventh Dáil - James Kilroy

James Kilroy (1890 – 5 January 1954) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. A farmer, he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Mayo North constituency at the 1943 general election, and was re-elected at the 1944 and 1948 general elections. He lost his Dáil seat at the 1951 general election but at the subsequent 1951 Seanad election, he was elected on the Agricultural Panel.

Members of the Eleventh Dáil - Roddy Connolly

Roddy Connolly

Roderick James (Roddy) Connolly (11 February 1901 – 16 December 1980) was a socialist politician in Ireland.

The son of Irish socialist James Connolly and Lillie Connolly, he was involved in the Easter Rising in 1916, where he served in the GPO under his father. He joined the Socialist Party of Ireland in 1917.
Connolly traveled to Russia on several occasions between 1920–21 and formed a close association with Lenin and was hugely influenced by the Soviet leader. He was a delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International.

He helped form and became President of the first Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in October 1921. He was editor of CPI newspaper, The Workers' Republic. He opposed the Treaty of December 1921 between the IRA and the British state and fought in the Civil War on the side of the republican forces. The CPI was the first Irish political party to oppose the Treaty and urged the IRA to adopt socialist policies to defeat the new Free State government. The CPI was dissolved in 1924 by the Comintern but in 1926, Connolly helped set up a second Marxist party, the Workers Party of Ireland. Connolly was the party leader and editor of its journal, The Hammer and Plough. This party too was dissolved in 1927.
Connolly joined the Irish Labour Party in 1928 and in 1934 participated in the last socialist initiative of Inter-War Ireland, the Irish Republican Congress. He was imprisoned twice in 1935. In 1943, Connolly was elected to the Dáil as a Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth. He lost his seat in 1944, but was re-elected in 1948, before losing once more in 1951. Connolly was also Financial Secretary of the party between 1941-49.

Connolly entered something of a semi-retirement between the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, but in the late 1960s, he began a comeback. He was elected as party chairman in 1971 and held this position until 1978. Connolly also sat in the Irish Senate between 1975–77 on the Cultural and Educational Panel. He was a strong supporter of the Labour/Fine Gael coalition government that was in power between 1973–77. Connolly died in St Michael's hospital, Dún Laoghaire, in December 1980. He had both pneumonia and stomach cancer. Connolly is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Members of the Eleventh Dáil - Oliver J. Flanagan

Oliver J. Flanagan (22 May 1920 – 26 April 1987) was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served in Dáil Éireann for 43 years and was Minister for Defence for six months. He was elected to the Dáil fourteen times between 1943 and 1982, topping the poll on almost every occasion. He was Father of the Dáil from 1981 until his retirement in 1987, and he remains one of the longest-serving members in the history of the Dáil.

Flanagan was a social conservative, who famously claimed that "there was no sex in Ireland before television". A notorious anti-semite early in his career, he used his maiden speech in the Dáil, on 9 July 1943, to urge the government to "rout the Jews out of this country".

Nonetheless, he was consistently popular in his own constituency, largely because of the attention he paid to individual voters' petitions and concerns. He has been described as "one of the cutest of cute hoors in the history of the Dáil".

Oliver J. Flanagan was born in Mountmellick, County Laois, on 22 May 1920. He was educated at Mountmellick Boys National School and worked as a carpenter and auctioneer.

Flanagan was secretly a Knight of Saint Columbanus and in 1978 was conferred a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul I.

Flanagan first held political office in 1942 when he was elected as a councillor to Laois County Council, a position he would hold for almost forty-five years.

He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1943 general election as a Teachta Dála for the Laois–Offaly constituency — the second youngest person ever to have been elected to the Dáil until that time. He had stood for election on the Monetary Reform Party ticket, an anti-semitic and Social Credit party confined to his own constituency which proposed reducing the supposed Jewish stranglehold on the financial system.

During the campaign, Flanagan wrote to Fr Denis Fahey: "Just a line letting you know we are going ahead with the Election campaign in Laoighis-Offaly against the Jew-Masonic System which is imposed on us. The people are coming to us — but it's hard to get the people to understand how they are held down by the Jews and Masons who control their very lives."

He used his maiden speech in the Dáil to urge the government to "rout the Jews out of this country":

“	How is it that we do not see any of these [Emergency Powers] Acts directed against the Jews, who crucified Our Saviour nineteen hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week? How is it that we do not see them directed against the Masonic Order? How is it that the I.R.A. is considered an illegal organisation while the Masonic Order is not considered an illegal organisation? [...] There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair's breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money.	”
—Oliver Flanagan, Dáil Éireann, 9 July 1943.

Nonetheless, he was re-elected to the Dáil in the 1944 general election with more than twice as many votes as he had won the previous year.

In 1947 he caused a controversy when he levelled accusations of corruption against members of the Fianna Fáil government, including Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, Minister for Justice Gerald Boland and Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass. A tribunal of inquiry comprising three judges investigated his allegations and found them to be untrue. Despite the judges' conclusion that Flanagan had lied to the tribunal, his vote increased by 45% in the 1948 general election.

During a 1952 Dáil debate, after John A. Costello had said "I made no reference to an Adoption of Children Bill", Flanagan quipped "Deputy Flynn would be more qualified to do that". John Flynn, who was not in the chamber at the time, interpreted this as an insulting innuendo, and later punched Flanagan in the Dáil restaurant. The Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privilege condemned the conduct of both TDs.

Flanagan joined Fine Gael in 1954. He served in government as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture from 1954 to 1957. In 1958, Fine Gael returned to opposition and Flanagan became front bench spokesperson for Lands. In 1975, he was named Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence.

When Paddy Donegan switched departments following the "thundering disgrace" controversy in 1976, Flanagan succeeded him as Minister for Defence in Liam Cosgrave's government. He served as Minister for six months, until Fine Gael lost power in the 1977 general election.

He was a representative on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1977 to 1987.

For reasons of ill-health, Flanagan did not contest the 1987 general election. His son, Charles Flanagan, was elected to his seat. Oliver Flanagan died two months after the election.

Members of the Eleventh Dáil - Philip Mahony

Philip Mahony (1 October 1897 – 20 April 1972) was an Irish Clann na Talmhan politician. A farmer by profession, he was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1943 general election as a Clann na Talmhan Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kilkenny constituency. He was defeated at the 1944 general election.

Members of the Eleventh Dáil - John Healy

John B. Healy (died 1995) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. A solicitor by profession, he was first elected as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) at the 1943 general election for the Kerry South constituency. He was re-elected at the 1944 general election but was defeated at the 1948 general election.