Thomas Ashe and Austin Stack and was present when Ashe took ill after being force-fed: ‘Fionán spoke to him through the cell door as Ashe was taken to be force-fed and said “Stick it Tom boy.” Ashe replied: “I’ll stick it Fin.”’21 Ashe died hours later on the night of 25 September at the Mater Hospital.
Lynch was in jail in Belfast when he was elected MP for South Kerry on 14 December 1918. In his absence, rallies were held across the constituency, not only advocating his candidacy, but also ‘in opposition to Mr JP Boland, who represented South Kerry in Parliament for the past 18 years’22 and who was standing aside – Boland had been the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for the constituency since 1900. On his release from prison in Manchester in August 1919, Lynch took part in the operation which saw fellow Kerry TDs Piaras Béaslaí and Austin Stack escape from Strangeways Prison on 25 October. Clearly valued for his administrative and political abilities, he travelled to London as joint secretary of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in 1921. While the Irish cabinet was on the run during the War of Independence, Lynch and his wife, Bridget, hosted some of its meetings in their home at 98 Pembroke Road. Lynch was appointed to the GHQ Staff of the IRA as Assistant Director of Organisation in early 1920. A supporter of the Treaty, he told his fellow TDs that he would vote for it for four main reasons:
because it gives us an army, because it gives us evacuation, because it gives us control over the finances of the country, and lastly, and greatest of all to me, because it gives us control over our education … I know what the people want, I know that I can speak for my own people – for the people of South Kerry, where I was bred and born … I will have none of the compromise that drives this country again into a welter of blood.23
As Minister for Education from April to August 1922, one of his first tasks was to abolish the Board of Education which had sacked him from his teaching position following the Easter Rising. During his short ministry, he was responsible for primary education. During the Civil War, he was a member of the Free State Army and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. He was one of three Cumann na nGaedheal TDs elected for Kerry in 1923. After the Civil War, he was appointed Minister for Fisheries in the first Free State government under W.T. Cosgrave, president of the Executive Council.
Lynch was never defeated at a general election and continued to serve Kerry, and Kerry South from 1937, as a Fine Gael TD. He was Leas Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil from 5 July 1938 to 12 May 1939, the second occupant of the post from Kerry.24 Lynch studied law and was called to the Bar in 1931. He was deputy leader of Fine Gael for a short period in February 1944. He resigned as a TD on 10 October 1944, following his appointment by the Fianna Fáil government as a Circuit Court judge to the Sligo/Donegal circuit. This resulted in the first ever Dáil by-election in Kerry South, which saw Donal O’Donoghue win a seat for Fianna Fáil. Lynch retired from the judiciary in 1959. He died suddenly at his home in Dartry, County Dublin, on 3 June 1966, aged seventy-seven, shortly after celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. He was survived by his wife Brigid (née Slattery from Tralee, daughter of Thomas Slattery, chairman of Tralee Rural District Council), whom he had married in 1919, and by their five sons and one daughter. One of his seven children, Judge Kevin Lynch, presided over the Kerry Babies Tribunal in 1985.
Austin Stack – TD for West Kerry
The oldest of the four men to represent Kerry in the Dáil in 1919, Austin Stack was once described by Éamon de Valera as ‘the honestest, the bravest, and the purest Republican in Ireland’.25 Stack’s entered politics after high-profile activism in his native county in the period after the foundation of the Irish Volunteers and during the Easter Rising. He was born Augustine Mary Moore Stack on 7 December 1879 in Ballymullen, Tralee, to William Moore Stack and his wife, Nanette O’Neill. His first employment was as a clerk in the office of solicitor John O’Connell and he later worked as an income tax collector in south and west Kerry. In his youth, he was a member of the Young Ireland Society and the Irish National Foresters, due to the influence of his father, who had been a Fenian leader and a member of the Land League. His mother had been jailed for her involvement in the Land League. Stack came to prominence on the playing field when he captained Kerry to the All-Ireland senior football title of 1904 (which was played in 1906). He had founded the John Mitchels club in Tralee with Maurice McCarthy and was its first club captain and secretary. His father William Moore Stack had been a founder member of the GAA in Kerry.26 The young Stack’s administrative skills saw him serve as Kerry GAA county board secretary from 1904 to 1908 and chairman from 1914 to 1917.
One of the most high-profile figures of the revolutionary period in Kerry, Stack was active in the Irish Republican Brotherhood from 1908 and became its linchpin in the county in the years before the Rising. He joined the Irish Volunteers upon the inception of the group in 1913. He attended the meeting in Tralee at which the local company was formed on 10 December. By the middle of 1914, he was the leader of the Volunteers in Tralee. They met at the old roller-skating rink at the Basin in the town. Following the split in the organisation in the autumn of 1914, Stack supported Eoin MacNeill and he was elected to the central executive of the Irish Volunteers. As preparations were made for the Easter Rising in April 1916, Stack became the key organiser in Kerry. During a visit to Tralee on 27 February 1916, Pádraig Pearse briefed Stack on plans to land arms from Germany for the Rising at Fenit. Stack remained secretive in his preparations, involving only Paddy Cahill, a future Kerry TD. They mobilised the Tralee Volunteers at the Rink on Easter Sunday. On hearing that Roger Casement had been arrested and that the arms landing had failed, he went, unarmed, to the RIC Barracks where Casement was being held and was immediately arrested. He was sentenced to death (later commuted to a prison term) and led prisoners on a number of hunger strikes.
While in jail in Belfast, Stack was elected Sinn Féin MP for West Kerry in December 1918. In a letter to his brother, which was read to a large rally on Denny Street in Tralee weeks before the election, Stack stated that the anticipated Sinn Féin victory in the poll had to be ‘of a decisive character in order to show that the constituency is solid for complete independence as against sham Home Rule legislatures which England may be offering us in settlement’.27 The sitting Irish Parliamentary Party MP, Thomas O’Donnell, stood aside, leaving Stack as the only contender. Upon handing in the nomination papers on his behalf, Stack’s solicitor, J.D. O’Connell, told those gathered that Stack ‘would not sit in the Imperial Parliament; he is to sit in your own Parliament – in your Irish Parliament in Dublin’.28 The new MP was in jail in Manchester when the First Dáil met. Nine months later, he escaped from jail, along with Piaras Béaslaí and others, and returned to Ireland.
Piaras Béaslaí, the first TD for East Kerry (National Library of Ireland).
North Kerry’s first TD, James Crowley and his wife, Clementine Burson.
West Kerry TD, Austin Stack, the first Kerry native to serve in an Irish government.
Fionán Lynch who was the first TD to represent South Kerry (Lynch family).
Austin Stack made history by becoming the first Kerry man to hold a cabinet position in an Irish government. From November 1919 to January 1922, he was Minister for Home Affairs, his primary duty being the establishment of a new legal administrative system. He oversaw the administration of the ‘Republican Courts’ or Dáil courts. During this period, Stack’s secretary solicitor was Daniel J. Browne from Listowel, later secretary to the Minister for Justice and Local Appointments Commissioner. Stack accompanied Éamon de Valera to post-Truce talks with British prime minister David Lloyd George in London. He was the only Kerry TD to oppose the Anglo-Irish
