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Prelude to the Easter Rising of 1916
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Sunday, August 8, 2010

Members of the First Dáil - Liam de Róiste

Liam de Róiste: Second Row: 3rd from the Right
Liam de Róiste (1882 – 15 May 1959) was an Irish Sinn Féin politician, diarist and Gaelic scholar.

He was a member of the Irish Volunteers and fought in the Easter Rising in 1916 with the Cork City Battlion. He was elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the Cork City constituency at the 1918 general election. In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann, though de Róiste did not attend. De Róiste opposed the Belfast Boycott stating in a 1920 Dáil debate:

it would mean having to purchase English-made goods instead of Belfast-made
articles. Economic penetration was the solution of the Ulster question.

In April, 1921 while staying at a neighbour's for fear of assassination, the family home was stormed by a party of Black and Tans. A personal friend and Catholic priest, James O'Callaghan, evidently mistaken for his host, was shot and killed while investigating the disturbance downstairs. The intruders left unopposed.

De Róiste was re-elected without contest at the 1921 elections for the Cork Borough constituency. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty and voted in favour of it. He was again re-elected in the 1922 general election as a member of pro-Treaty Sinn Féin. He did not stand at the 1923 general election but stood unsuccessfully as a Cumann na nGaedhael candidate at the June 1927 general election. In his private life he was Secretary and Director of the Irish International Trading Corporation, Cork, and an author.

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