Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Martin for raising this matter, to which I am responding on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin.

John Devoy was an important historical figure. Born in Kill, County Kildare, in 1842, he went on to become an active member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, IRB, before arrest and penal servitude for treason against Britain led to his exile in America in 1871. He spoke on behalf of the Irish cause to the US House of Representatives, became a journalist with the New York Herald and was active with Clann na nGael, the successor of the Fenian Brotherhood and sister organisation of the IRB. In 1875, he helped to organise the daring escape of six Irish prisoners from Freemantle in Australia aboard a ship called the Catalpa.

In 1879, John Devoy helped to bring together the leading republican leaders and the lrish Parliamentary Party leader, Charles Stuart Parnell. who was an MP from 1846 to 1891. The result was that the Irish National Land League which campaigned successfully in the 1880s and 1890s for the rights of Irish Catholic tenant farmers. Following the Irish War of Independence, Devoy supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, believing it was a sound foundation for future Irish freedom and eventual reunification of the Irish Free State with the Unionist Northern Ireland created in 1921. In the aftermath of the conflict, John Devoy was able to visit Ireland in 1924. He died in New York in 1928, and was later laid to rest in Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin.

The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media received an inquiry regarding the possibility and offer of official assistance to facilitate the return of John Devoy’s chair from the USA to Dublin. The chair is in the possession of Irish American community members in New York and was due to be sent to Kildare in 2014 to mark the year of the centenary of John Devoy’s final visit to Ireland in 2024. The chair is of significance because John Devoy used it while writing his memoir, Recollections of an Irish Rebel. This memoir was first published in 1929 and is an account of John Devoy’s long career as an Irish nationalist republican revolutionary from the 1850s until the 1920s. This important historic record is his narrative account of the Fenian movement and its origins and progress.

As members will be aware, the Minister and her Department, in conjunction with the Department of An Taoiseach, were responsible for the decade of centenaries. The latter was envisaged as a comprehensive exploration of the events in the turbulent period of Irish history that shaped the progress of Ireland in the 20th century. From the agitation of the Home Rule movement, the emergence of armed resistance, the economic and social conditions, including the 1913 Lockout, the descent into the First World War, the Easter Rising 1916 and its aftermath, the armistice, the general election of 1918 and the renewed assertion in arms of the Irish Republic that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921.

In the final phase, the commemorative programme addressed the tragedy of Civil War in Ireland. Nonetheless, it was noted that an abiding memory of special interest would be reflected in a special commemoration organised by the County Council in Kildare in the aftermath of the national programme. The Department is currently engaged with both Kildare County Council and the Irish Consulate General in New York in relation to the transfer of the chair, which I understand is to take place in the coming weeks. Members may be aware of the planning currently underway in Kildare to commemorate the centenary of the final visit of John Devoy to Ireland, which I expect will be of interest not only to the local community but to many across Ireland and the United States.