Cathal Goulding

Who was Cathal Goulding?

Cathal Goulding was Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA.

One of seven children born into a republican family in East Arran Street in the north inner city of Dublin, Goulding was involved as teenager in Fianna Éireann, the IRA youth wing. In 1939, when Goulding reached the age of seventeen he joined the IRA. In December of that year, he took part in a raid on Irish Army ammunition stores in Phoenix Park, Dublin; and in November 1941 he was gaoled for a year in Mountjoy Prison for membership of an unlawful organisation and possession of IRA documents. On his release in 1942, he was immediately interned at the Curragh Camp, where he remained until 1944.

In 1945, he was involved in the attempts to reestablish the IRA which had been almost decimated as a result of the action of the authorities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. He was among twenty-five to thirty men who met at O'Neill's pub, Pearse Street, to try to re-establish the IRA in Dublin.