It is one hundred years since the execution of the young Irish republican Kevin Barry.
Kevin Barry was part of an IRA party intending to relieve British soldiers of their weapons at Monk's Bakery in Dublin. He was captured and tried for the murder of a soldier. He was executed at the age of 18 on 1 November 1920 at Mountjoy Jail in Dublin.
Professor Eunan O'Halpin, Kevin Barry biographer and a grandnephew, says that although he was so young Kevin Barry was a committed republican with clear political ideas.
He was willing to go out and fight and go out and die and if necessary, kill on the way for Ireland.
Jimmy Carrington, who participated in the ambush, spoke to Cathal O'Shannon on the programme 'Newsbeat' in 1970 about seeing Kevin Barry under a lorry just before he was captured.
Kevin Barry was one of ten men executed at Mountjoy Jail during that period. The other nine men included Thomas Bryan, Patrick Doyle, Frank Flood, Patrick Moran, Thomas Whelan, Bernard Ryan, Thomas Traynor, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher. All had been sentenced to death for IRA activities. It took almost 80 years for their bodies to be exhumed from Mountjoy and was reburied at Glasnevin Cemetery.
Finín Ó Ceallcacháin, nephew of Bernard Ryan, describes the joy his mother felt when she finally got to see a proper grave for her brother on hallowed ground.
Conor Dodd, historian at the Glasnevin Trust, says that the men became well known due to the public nature of their executions. Over time, that knowledge diminished and the men largely became forgotten. The Glasnevin Trust now attempts to tell their stories.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 28 October 2020. The reporter is Donal Byrne.
This report features Leonard Cohen singing The Ballad of Kevin Barry.
