Aodogan O'Rahilly today. The seat in his study is one which was used by his father.
It is probably unusual that on the basis of having completed a first year of Engineering studies at UCD, someone is considered to be the right person to collect a load of land-mines from Templemore. But that's just what happened to Aodogan O'Rahilly . . . and the assignment meant that he avoided capture by Free State soldiers in the Civil War, as the Tralee Republican column to which he belonged was heavily defeated in his absence.
Aodogan O'Rahilly today. The seat in his study is one which was used
by his father.
Warfare was nothing new in the experience of the young O'Rahilly, as his father Michael was the first of the 1916 rebel leaders to be killed in that rising, while leading an attack against British forces in Dublin's Moore St. Today in his 90s, Aodogan O'Rahilly still treasures his father's last note to his wife Nannie, written hurriedly in a lane off Moore St as he died. 'It was a good fight anyhow . . .' Michael O'Rahilly scribbled, along with final endearments, on the back of a note which Aodog"n had himself sent to his father only a few days before. And when it was delivered to Nannie O'Rahilly after his death, it had been pierced by one of the bullets which killed him.
It was 'a good fight' that earned the dead rebel the epitaph by which he is still known in history today " The O'Rahilly. And he left his children the legacy of his heroism. But Michael O'Rahilly had also been a man of business success, practical interests and an inventive turn of mind, and he passed these attributes on, particularly to his younger son.
"I remember as a child that I preferred to help him decarbonise the engine of our car than play football," Aodogan O'Rahilly remembers. "I suppose it was this trait which resulted in the decision that I should study engineering. I had a choice of doing it in the Engineering Works at Inchicore, or at university . . . I chose UCD."
It was a time of distraction for a young man in Dublin as the tensions of the fledgling Irish State and the difficulties of its negotiations with Britain made getting down to study a problematical issue. "I felt myself to be passionately interested in 'the cause' on the Republican side, and I wonder to this day how I passed those first end-of-year examinations in Earslfort Terrace."
Strangely enough, Aodogan O'Rahilly says there was little enough interest in the political situation among his student colleagues at that time. It seemed that he was among only a few to be fevered by events which later proved themselves to be momentous in the formation of today's Ireland. But then, how many of his confreres had his own connection with the evocative 1916?
The O'Rahilly family had a long connection with Kerry - Aodogan's grandfather had established a thriving business in Ballylongford when the small ports of Ireland were the trade and distribution centres that predated the establishment of the national railways. Thus it was that the young O'Rahilly was with his mother and other family members in their summer home in Ventry Harbour when the attack on the Four Courts in Dublin signalled the start of the Civil War.
"I enlisted with the 100-strong Tralee column of Republicans and we were marching to Tipperary when I was sent on the get the landmines," he remembers. "While I was away, the column was surrounded by Free Staters outside Thurles. There was no column to go back to, so I spent the rest of the year with a 30-strong machine-gun squad in Tipperary, taking part in many ambushes."
Winding the Clock is an account written by Aodogan O'Rahilly about his
family's background and how his father became involved with the 1916 Rising
He narrowly avoided capture again during this time when, as a dispatch driver, he was sent by De Valera with a message for one Lieutenant Sharkey in a village between Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. "I got there to find Lieutenant Sharkey gone to Waterford and a Free State company literally around the corner from me, so I had to move fast to get away. And then I had to convince De Valera afterwards that I had gone to the location, as I hadn't been able to deliver the message to Lieutenant Sharkey."
Aodogan O'Rahilly went back to his studies following the signing of the Truce, but things weren't completely sorted out even then, and he remembers several incidents involving Free Staters and Republicans while he was back in College . . . in one of these he was arrested himself after a skirmish at Portobello Barracks. "It seemed that the Free State soldiers had suffered losses in the incident and when I was picked up I was brought to Beggars Bush Barracks for interrogation. Luckily I was able to tell them that at the time of the fighting I had been delivering a message to the wife of Desmond Fitzgerald, who was a family friend and then Minister for Foreign Affairs."
When he qualified as an engineer in 1926, the country was calmer but the bitterness engendered by the Civil War was still bubbling away. And what side you had been on in that conflict could affect your employment prospects. "For instance, I went for a position in the ESB, but it was given to somebody else, and to this day I am convinced that it was because I had been a Republican that I failed to get it."
Being of the same practical nature as his father, the young graduate had no aspirations towards an academic career, but he took up a position in UCD doing 'post office testing' with another colleague under the supervision of Professor John Taylor, who was Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. He stuck with it for nine months, but he managed to talk himself out of the job when he convinced Professor Taylor that there was really only enough work for one in the operation. "The other man working there had a family and needed the money more, so I left."
After that the young O'Rahilly joined Donnelly's Bacon Factory in Cork Street, and later transferred to the company's Dundalk factory. But the business instinct of his family background was too strong and he was determined to set up his own business. Looking for something unusual, he decided on a plant to make concrete roofing tiles. He had obviously inherited the family business acumen and the enterprise was a success.
"But there were still echoes of the Civil War, and I was one of the very few former Republicans who had his own business. It was a time when very few people believed that Irish industry was something with a future."
There were some, though, and in 1932 Aodogan O'Rahilly was asked to join the Republican ticket in the national elections. His fellow candidates were Sean Lemass, Bob Briscoe, Frank Hugh O'Donnell and a Dr Lynch. Typically, O'Rahilly got bored with the set speeches which they made at every election rally in their travels.
"I wasn't very good at adhering to the party line," he remembers. "I decided to liven things up a bit, and one speech I made about the young men of Switzerland 'who keep rifles under their bed and attend target practice each weekend' earned me national headlines . . . and a rebuke from Sean Lemass."
O'Rahilly wasn't elected. "But I wasn't eliminated, either," he says wryly. "I was just left kind of hanging there."
Aodogan O'Rahilly (right) with his brother Mac in their Fianna
uniforms, circa 1915
He subsequently became interested in Communism, as did many people at the time, despite the fact that he was the owner of a substantial and successful business. But that interest rather died after a trip to the USSR in 1936.
"I had that year been appointed to the board of what was to become Bord na Mona, on the invitation of Todd Andrews, whom I had met during the Civil War. He had inspected Russian turf stations the previous year, and he wanted me to go out and see them for myself. At that stage I was married, and I made the trip with Marion. With the interest I had in Communism at the time, it was almost a trip to a land of my heart's desire . . . but my belief in Communism was badly dented by the time I returned."
The first 'dent' was when he introduced himself to his Russian hosts as a newly-appointed director of the Irish Turf Board. "Oh," they asked politely, "has Mr Andrews been liquidated?"
Experiences on the Russian rail system, and his observations of the poverty of people in the USSR at the time also helped to evaporate his belief that Communism was the solution to the inequalities of mankind.
Aodogan O'Rahilly subsequently became chairman of Bord na Mona, retiring in 1974. Other interests included the purchase, and revival of, the port of Greenore in County Louth in the 1950s. But they are stories for another time.
In the meantime, Aodogan O'Rahilly had another indirect connection with his alma mater during the De Valera era. He was appointed by the Long Fellow to a committee which was tasked to consider the future of UCD. With his customary practical turn of mind, though alone amongst his colleagues, O'Rahilly suggested that it might be best to amalgamate UCD with TCD and form one large university.
"It was an opinion that, I think, did not find particular favour with the hierarchy of the time," he smiles, with a twinkle that belies his age.