Tag Archives: Con McMahon

One hundred years ago today Patrick Hennessy wrote his final letters before he was executed the following morning with his friend and fellow IRA man Con McMahon. Joe Ó Muircheartaigh looks at the bravery of the Clooney man’s words, who at the time of his death was secretary of the Clare County GAA Board.   It wasn’t until the last Wednesday of October in 1924 that Patrick Hennessy and Con McMahon were given the dignity of a proper burial — a resting place among their own people in Clooney, over 21 months after they had been executed in Limerick Gaol by an Irish Army firing squad. The bodies of the two volunteers had been kept at the gaol after their execution, with one theory being that the Bishop of Killaloe, who was a staunch supporter of the Cumann na nGaedheal government headed up by his personal friend, WT Cosgrove, refused to allow the bodies to be buried on consecrated ground …

Ahead of a special commemoration at Clooney Cemetery at 1pm on Sunday, January 23, at which he will be the guest orator, Dr Tomás Mac Conmara writes about the controversial Civil War executions of Clare republicans, Con McMahon and Paddy Hennessy.   Readers of the Clare Champion on 3rd March 1923 were informed of the outcome of a Clare GAA Convention, held over the previous week. It was announced that the new County Secretary of the GAA in Clare, a position of some significance, was twenty-three-year-old, P.V. Murphy, better known as Vincent, from Knockanimana, outside Ennis. No reference was made to the man he replaced. Five weeks earlier, when it carried a brief report on eleven Anti-Treaty IRA prisoners, executed by the Free State on 20th January, the Clare Champion referred to two men shot in Limerick as ‘C McMahon’ and ‘P. Hennessy’, with no elaboration on their identity. The men, both from Clooney, were IRA Volunteers, Con McMahon and …