Richard Mulcahy

Yeah, so when the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 1921, it was kind of determined by the Irish delegates, such as Michael Collins, and even the British delegates, such as Winston Churchill, that the Royal Irish Constabulary was a controversial police force, and they would have to be disbanded.

So as part of that then, at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin on O'Connell Street, Michael Collins himself chaired a special committee along with men such as Richard Mulcahy, Ono Duffy, Michael Staines, Ned Boyd, D.I. Walsh, D.I. Carney and that to set up a committee to determine, set up a new police force in Ireland.

And that is where the Civil Guard came into play.

So after that was formed, Collins sent out a special dispatch to all of his IRA commanders across the country, requesting that they send their best men to Dublin for a special assignment.

And of course, they put their few pennies and their shillings together.

And there was a fund which was administered by General Richard Mulcahy to try and alleviate the pain.

But it is, you know, I think growing up in the area and having gone to school in West Limerick, we had a great national school teacher, Sean Kelly, in the Courtney Bi School in Newcastle West, who used to talk to us about it and he was a great lover of local history.

So when I became minister with responsibility for it, it was one of the things that I was very anxious that we do and I want to thank the department, the Office of Public Works on post, the National Archives, the council, but most importantly the community who have kept the the memory of the drum 48 alive and have made sure that what we have for the weekend is befitting and tasteful for the memories of those who died and for those as well who were so horrifically injured.

and Ryan was very much at the driving force of that, which is why he was arrested in December 1920.

And it's also very important to note that Ryan shared this unwavering commitment to the Republican cause with his wife, Maureen Cregan, who you can see here, whom he married in 1919, and also many of the Ryan siblings, like his sisters Min, Kit, Phyllis, Nell, and Agnes, They also all took a prominent and notable part in the struggle for Irish independence, and they married individuals who did likewise, such as Sean T. O'Kelly, Dennis McCullough, and Richard Mulcahy.

The Rhines could thus rightly claim to be one of the most prominent families of the Irish Revolution.

However, like the country they had fought for, they soon found themselves bitterly divided over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, Ryan, his wife, and many of his sisters, they regarded the treaty as a betrayal of the Irish Republic that they had fought for.

And James Ryan was not prepared to surrender that ideal.

And as he said to his constituency party at the time, he was pledged to guard the nation's honor, whatever the consequences.

Now, of course, notably among those on the other side of that political divide was Ryan's own sister, Min, and her husband, Richard Mulcahy, who was soon to be head of the newly formed Free State Army.

So as you can imagine, with that sort of division in the family, those political differences put an enormous strain on familial relations.