Fionán Lynch

Who was Fionán Lynch?

Fionán Lynch was an Irish revolutionary, barrister, politician and judge.

Fionán Lynch was born in Cahersiveen, County Kerry in 1889 and educated in Rockwell College and Blackrock College. He qualified as a national school teacher in 1912 and joined the Gaelic League the same year. He produced a translation of Molière's Le Maladie Imaginaire into the Irish language for the League. He was a founder member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood that same year. He was a friend of Michael Collins. Lynch fought in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 in the Four Courts garrison with Commandant Edward Daly in North King Street. Daly was executed and Captain Fionán Lynch was sentenced to death but had the sentence commuted to 10 years penal servitude. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol and later in Mountjoy Prison. He was one of the last Irishmen to speak with Thomas Ashe before he died. He was later interned in prison in England and Wales until a general amnesty in late 1917.

Upon his release Lynch resumed his paramilitary activities and was elected as an abstentionist Sinn Féin Member of Parliament for Kerry South at the 1918 Westminster Election, becoming a Member of the 1st Dáil.