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O’CONNELL SCHOOL ALUMNI AND THE REVOLUTIONARY DECADE

A chara,—The erudite, normally precise Joe Connell, in the course of his article on the execution of four anti-Treaty IRA leaders (HI 31.1, Jan./Feb. 2023, 100 Years Ago), states that the killing of TD Seán Hales (Cork) and the wounding of Leas Ceann Comhairle Padraic Ó Máille (Mayo) took place ‘outside the Dáil’, which is somewhat misleading. In fact, on the day, the two men were emerging from lunch together at a hotel on Ormonde Quay, on their way to the Dáil, when they were attacked by two anti-Treaty IRA men: Hales died, Ó Máille survived his wounds. Both gunmen escaped, but in recent years I’ve read that author/playwright Ulick O’Connor was told in 1985 by an ex-IRA intelligence officer that one of the killers was a certain Owen Connolly from Glasnevin, an alumnus of my own Alma Mater, the O’Connell School (OCS), many of whose pupils and past-pupils contributed more honourably to the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the foundation and development of our state, not least Seán Lemass, who later became taoiseach, as did fellow OCS alumnus John A. Costello, the man who declared the Republic of Ireland.—Le fior-mheas,

RAYMOND CASS