proposed Mr Hilliard as chairman, a motion seconded by Peter Huggard, ironically the man who had been co-opted to fill the seat when Maurice Leonard had been disqualified in 1909. T.T. O’Connor was then elected (also unopposed) to the position of vice-chairman.
Eugene O’Sullivan MP.
John Murphy MP and his wife, Anne (née McCarthy) (Seán Murphy).
Hilliard then handed the acting clerk – none other than John Murphy – a message requiring a letter be sent to the Lord Chancellor, requesting that he, Hilliard, be appointed a magistrate, having been elected chairman. Murphy endeavoured to contact the council solicitor, Maurice McCartie, but he was in court in Cahersiveen. McCartie had been Eugene O’Sullivan’s solicitor in the petition to unseat proceedings following the general election in 1910. The Lord Chancellor, though, declined to intervene, referring the matter to the Local Government Board for adjudication. In the meantime, O’Sullivan convened a meeting at which Michael Murray was appointed town clerk. Hilliard, however, wished to have John Murphy appointed to the position, but the situation was ultimately resolved, again, in favour of Eugene O’Sullivan.
There had also been an associated, tense battle involving rival supporters of the two men for the chairmanship of the county council two years earlier. The protagonists in this instance were another two Killarney members, James O’Shea and James T. O’Connor, one of those elected to the very first council in 1899 who had confronted O’Sullivan about respecting the decision of the meeting at the selection convention in 1906. O’Shea, a dairy farmer from Gortahoonig, Muckross had contested the position with M.J. Nolan the previous year and had been none too gracious about the matter following his defeat. However, when confronted by a well-known supporter of Murphy’s, good grace did not enter the matter for one moment. O’Shea had been elected for the Aghadoe ED in 1914 (having narrowly lost in 1911). As chairman of Killarney Rural District Council, he was already entitled to sit as a member, but he was also elected in the poll. He challenged the incumbent George O’Gorman in 1908 and won, but in 1911, the Ballyhar man came back to win by a single vote following a recount.
As one would almost anticipate in this tale of vexatious rivalry, O’Gorman had been the man who had attempted to propose Eugene O’Sullivan at the uncompleted Irish Party convention in 1906. At the 1915 county council meeting, chairman Nolan called the meeting to order with a full schedule of members present. Fireworks had been expected and the chairman indicated that he was not putting his name forward on this occasion. John J. Sheehan (Sneem Electoral Union) proposed J.T. O’Connor for the chair and P.J. Moynihan (Headford) seconded. James O’Shea was nominated by Michael J. O’Donnell (Castlegregory, later also a member of Fianna Fáil) and John Healy (Ardfert) seconded. For a moment, it seemed as if war could be averted when the ‘father of the house’, Edward Fitzgerald from Cahersiveen, was asked to allow his name to go forward, but he declined after a quick discussion with O’Connor.
The vote was called and O’Connor was declared the winner by 18–8. He addressed the members and thanked those who had voted for him, including Fitzgerald, who had withdrawn in his favour. James O’Shea rose ‘on a point of order’. He began by explaining his reasons for contesting the position and then referred to the 1914 election: ‘I went forward then, with the same belief as I have now – and time has proved – that the man I opposed was not a suitable man for the chair of this council.’ Uproar ensued. When he resumed, he said that he could contest again in 1916 and then stated ‘that the man who sits in the chair is not a proper or suitable man; he is not a just man.’7
In the shouting that ensued, the chairman was heard to say, ‘yerra, let him at it’. And O’Shea obliged, suggesting that his opponent was not an honourable man. O’Connor responded, ‘Now Jamesy, take it as well as you gave it,’ and drew attention to a number of other matters. O’Shea tried to get in a response, but the chairman moved to the election of the vice-chairman, which went to Jack McKenna, who was elected unopposed. As the Listowel man rose to accept the position, Healy and O’Donnell asked that O’Shea be allowed to speak and O’Connor asked O’Shea if he would withdraw and allow McKenna to be heard. He declined and, in the hubbub that followed, was heard to say, ‘your vote in this room was never a vote for fair play. You were always an advocate for the poor man’s son, but when it came to a question of the poor man’s son, you voted against him’. Eventually order was restored and the meeting continued.
***
We move to the 1920s and the formative years of the Irish Free State. Eugene O’Sullivan reclaimed his position as chairman of Killarney Urban District Council in 1926 and continued to be re-elected until his death at the Imperial Hotel in Killarney on 29 May 1942. The month before he passed away, it emerged that six of the ten members of Killarney Urban District Council were disqualified from holding their seats because they had not paid their rates and the chairman had also made himself ineligible to sit in the chamber as he had not attended a meeting for over six months. He was, however, not in good health and attendance at meetings of the council was very low at this point in any event. The month after O’Sullivan died, the urban council was suspended and a commissioner was appointed and remained in place for three years.
O’Sullivan became the chairman of the Board of Killarney Mineral Waters and a member of Killarney Race Company. He also headed the first united farming association in Kerry in 1929 (Kerry Farmers’ Union and Marketing Association) and chaired the committee that organised the National Ploughing Championships in Killarney in 1939. But he also made one further attempt to advance his political career, standing as an Independent candidate in the first general election of 1927 (June). His cousin John Marcus O’Sullivan was a candidate too, but Eugene came in ninth in the poll, with 2,405 votes and was only eliminated on the ninth count. Perhaps he should have pursued this ambition by formally joining the government party, for when the electors were summoned to vote again the following September, Cumann na nGaedheal had one of its most successful elections in Kerry: Fionán Lynch and John Marcus were at the head of the poll and the party took 39.9 per cent of the vote, which would never happen again.
John Murphy did adopt a political alliance, joining Fianna Fáil shortly after the party came into being. There was a particularly troubled Fianna Fáil meeting in Knocknagoshel on 12 September 1927, which resulted in him being charged with ‘falsely accusing a person of a crime punishable by law’, along with Patrick J. Tuohy of Dublin, the Fianna Fáil organiser for Kerry. Also charged was Eamon Horan, the former Brigadier-General of the National Army and Clann Éireann candidate in the general election, who was charged under the Treason Clause of the Public Safety Act. He was present as Clann Éireann had entered into an agreement to support Fianna Fáil in the Dáil. All three were remanded to Limerick Prison, but when the case came before the District Court in Tralee later that month, the state entered a nolle prosequi against the two Fianna Fáil men.8 John Murphy died at his home in High Street – the Park Place Hotel – on 17 April 1930, in relatively reduced circumstances, his grandnephew, Seán, said.
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There was an expression years ago used to describe a person given to fractious behaviour: ‘a thorny wire’. The story of the antagonism between Murphy and O’Sullivan, not to mention a number of the other people mentioned here, makes it clear that there were quite a number of thorny wires engaged in politics in Killarney during this period. Whatever provoked their intense dislike for one another, Murphy and O’Sullivan were both responsible for exacerbating the tension, seemingly rarely missing the opportunity to seek to put each other down. They were both able to generate considerable loyalty among their supporters and they certainly made the Kerry political scene a colourful one for many years. The rivalry even persists to this day, to some degree, in that hallowed arena of Gaelic football. While Eugene O’Sullivan joined Dr Croke’s when he came to town and certainly contributed much
