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Patrick Smith was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, who served as a Teachta Dála from 1923 until 1977

James Ryan was an Irish politician and Teachta Dála (TD) for Wexford from 1918 to 1922 and from 1923 to 1965, with Sinn Féin until 1926 and then with Fianna Fáil until 1965. Ryan was Minister for Health, Social Welfare, and Agriculture during his policital career.

Desmond O'Malley was an Irish politician. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Limerick East constituency from 1968 to 2002. O'Malley served as Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1977-1981 and 1989-1992, Leader of the Progressive Democrats from 1985-1993, Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism from March 1982-October 1982, Minister for Justice from 1970-1973 and Government Chief Whip and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence from 1969-1970. Initially, a prominent Fianna Fáil party member, O'Malley went on to found the Progressive Democrats and served as the party's first leader from 1985 until 1993. He retired from politics at the 2002 Irish General Election.

Seán McCarthy was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. McCarthy was a medical doctor before entering politics, and first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) for the Tipperary South constituency at the 1981 general election

Maureen Frances Haughey (neé Lemass) was born in Dublin on September 3rd 1925, the eldest child of Kathleen and Seán Lemass. Her father Seán was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fáil from 1959 to 1966. She attended University College Dublin, where she obtained BA Commerce degree. It was at UCD she met her future husband, Charles Haughey. Maureen Haughey's brother Noel Lemass also served as a Fianna Fáil TD, while her sister-in-law, Eileen Lemass, also served as a member of Dáil Éireann. Her youngest son, Seán Haughey, has served as Lord Mayor of Dublin and was a TD and has previously been a Minister of State. She died on 17 March 2017, aged 91.

Dr Garrett FitzGerald, was born in Dublin on 9 February 1926. In 1950 he assumed responsibility for economic planning and transport scheduling within Aer Lingus. Between 1959 and 1973 FitzGerald lectured in economics at UCD, and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1969, with his dissertation being published by the IPA as a book, Planning in Ireland. FitzGerald stood for the Seanad as a Fine Gael candidate on the industrial and commercial panel. In 1969 he became TD for Dublin South-East and opposition front bench spokesman on education. In 1971 FitzGerald became Fine Gael spokesman on finance. He took a leading role in the campaign for Irish membership of the EEC, touring the country with the Labour Party spokesman, Justin Keating. After the 1973 general election a Fine Gael–Labour coalition government would be formed, Cosgrave appointed FitzGerald to the Foreign Affairs. After Cosgrave resigned following Fine Gael’s electoral defeat in the June 1977 general election, FitzGerald was elected as leader on 1 July 1977.
At the June 1981 general election Fine Gael gained sixty-five seats (compared with forty-three in 1977) and formed a minority coalition government with Labour (fifteen seats), and FitzGerald was elected Taoiseach, on 30 June 1981. At the subsequent November 1982 general election Fianna Fáil was reduced to seventy-five seats; Fine Gael secured seventy and Labour under Dick Spring sixteen, with the highest Fine Gael vote ever recorded (39.2 per cent). Labour reversed a recent conference decision not to enter coalition, and a second FitzGerald government was formed, but the need to placate Labour contributed to its limitations. Perhaps FitzGerald’s largest contribution to the subsequent Irish economic recovery came on the European level, with his significant role in insisting that the renewal of the European integration process under Commission President Jacques Delors, embodied in the 1987 Single European Act and paving the way for subsequent integration measures, must be accompanied by increased development funds to promote economic cohesion by developing the economies of the poorer member states. FitzGerald also negotiated favourable quotas for Irish agricultural produce despite pressure for European subsidy reductions.
The coalition government fell in January 1987, having lost its majority through the defections of individual Fine Gael and Labour TDs, when Labour ministers refused to support proposed budgetary cuts which the Dáil was unlikely to ratify. FitzGerald resigned as Fine Gael leader shortly after the election in March 1987 of a minority Fianna Fáil government led by Haughey, having stated in the Dáil that Fine Gael would support government measures necessary for economic recovery. FitzGerald left the Dáil at the 1992 election, supporting himself by journalism and consultancy work. Garret FitzGerald died of pneumonia on 19 May 2011 in the Mater Hospital, Dublin after a short illness. His research on primary education in early nineteenth-century Ireland was published posthumously in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.

Source: Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography (2021), https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.010020.v1

Kevin Boland was born 15 October 1917 in Fairview, Dublin, the son of Gerald Boland, Fianna Fáil TD and cabinet minister, and his wife, Annie (née Keating), former Cumann na mBan and Gaelic League activist. After training as a civil engineer and serving as a lieutenant in the army during the Emergency (World War II) Boland worked in the Fianna Fáil party organisation. He was first elected to the Dáil for Dublin County in the 1957 general election, after standing unsuccessfully in 1951 and 1954 and serving on Dublin corporation. He was re-elected for Dublin County in 1961 and 1965 and Dublin South County in 1969. He became Minister for Defence and held this post until 1961, overseeing the internment of IRA members. He then served as Minister for Social Welfare (1961–6) and minister for local government (1966–70).On 5 May 1970 Boland resigned from the cabinet after the dismissal of Haughey and Blaney over the attempted arms importation. After the arrest of Haughey, Blaney, and others on 27–8 May, Boland publicly accused Lynch of ‘felon-setting’ (exposing northern nationalists to arrest). He resigned as party secretary and was expelled from the parliamentary party.
After the acquittal of the arms trial defendants on 23 October 1970, he joined calls for Lynch's resignation but was soon isolated. He resigned from the Dáil on 4 November 1970, considering himself bound by his party pledge but refusing to endorse perjured evidence in a vote of confidence. Boland tried to organise a grassroots revolt at the Fianna Fáil ard fheis on 19–21 February 1971 but it was defeated. He left Fianna Fáil in May 1972. The following month, encouraged by his father, he founded a republican party, Aontacht Éireann, which ran thirteen candidates (including Boland in Dublin South County) in the 1973 general election; all were defeated. In the 1970s and 1980s Boland produced several small books on Irish life and politics. Boland died 23 September 2001 after a short illness.

By Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.000768.v1

Éamon (‘Dev’) De Valera was born 14 October 1882 in Manhattan, New York, the only child of Juan Vivion de Valera and Catherine (‘Kate’) Coll; he was christened Edward. His mother was a native of Bruree, Co. Limerick while his father had been born (1853) in Spain's Basque country. De Valera came to Ireland as a young child in April 1885 where he lived with his maternal family in Knockmore, Bruree. He joined the Irish Volunteers at their inaugural meeting in Dublin's Rotunda Rink (25 November 1913). In March 1915 he was appointed commandant of the 3rd Battalion, comprising the companies in the south-east of the city, after he had satisfied Patrick Pearse of his willingness to participate in a rising; he then became adjutant to Thomas MacDonagh, the brigade commander. During the 1916 Easter Rising de Valera's battalion occupied Boland's Mill, commanding the south-east approaches over the Grand Canal. He was arrested and sentenced to death but released for a variety of reasons, including the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He was imprisoned in four English prisons (Dartmoor, Lewes, Maidstone, and Pentonville), before returning to Ireland and becoming one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. He was elected president of Sinn Féin on 25 October 1917, a post he held until 1926; and on 27 October he was also elected president of the Irish Volunteers.
De Valera's refusal to participate as one of the Irish plenipotentiaries in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in the conference that began on 11 October and culminated with the signing of the treaty in the early hours of 6 December 1921. The Dáil approved the treaty by 64 votes to 57 on 7 January 1922. De Valera resigned as president of Dáil Éireann but stood for reelection and was even more narrowly defeated, by 60 votes to 58, on 10 January. De Valera's refusal to accept those votes as a final verdict ensured that the treaty split became the great divide in the party politics of independent Ireland. Relations between the new Irish government, which was backed by most of the Dáil and the electorate, and the anti-Treaty side under the nominal leadership of de Valera, descended into the Irish Civil War (June 1922 to May 1923), in which the pro-treaty Free State forces defeated the anti-Treaty IRA. De Valera was arrested by Free State troops on 15 August 1923 and not released until 16 July 1924. De Valera's breach with Sinn Féin was further postponed when the party's ard fheis in 1925 evaded the issue, but an IRA convention in November – adopting a new constitution, freeing the IRA from political control – sharpened the divide. A month later he announced the formation of a new republican party, Fianna Fáil, with the first objective of ‘securing the political independence of a united Ireland as a republic’; its other objectives were the restoration of the Irish language, a social system of equal opportunity, land redistribution designed to maximise the number of families on the land, and economic self-sufficiency. The ensuing election (June 1927) marked a decisive step in de Valera's quest for a majority: Fianna Fáil won 44 seats while the government party slumped from 63 to 47.
On 9 March 1932 the dáil elected Éamon de Valera president of the executive council by 81 to 68, a majority dependent on the Labour Party and some independent support in addition to the 72 Fianna Fáil deputies. He at once initiated steps to fulfil his election promises to abolish the oath and withhold land annuities owed to the UK for loans provided under the Irish Land Acts and agreed as part of the 1921 Treaty. In the 1948 election, Fianna Fáil lost the outright majority they had held for sixteen years and De Valera became Leader of the Opposition before returning to the Dáil as Taoiseach in 1951. He departed the active politics of the Dáil in 1959 and successfully secured the presidency of Ireland, and was inaugurated President of Ireland on 25 June 1959. Éamon de Valera died aged 92 after a brief illness on 29 August 1975.

Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002472.v1

James “Jim” Tunney, politician, was born 25 December 1924 in Finglas, Co. Dublin. In 1963 he joined Fianna Fáil and was invited to stand in Dublin North-West in the general election of 1965, but failed to take a second seat for his party. Elected to Dublin city council (1967–79), he was first elected to the Dáil for Dublin North-West, the second of four TDs, in the general election of 18 June 1969 and was later appointed parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Education (December 1972–February 1973), with special responsibility for youth and sport. He topped the poll in the general election of 28 February 1973, was opposition spokesman on the Gaeltacht (1973–7), and was an alderman on Dublin corporation (1974–8). Having topped the poll in the general election of 16 June 1977, he was reappointed parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Education with special responsibility for youth and sport (1977–81) by Taoiseach Jack Lynch and then by, Charles Haughey. He served as Leas-Cheann Comhairle in 1981–2 and was the first TD to be elected for Dublin North-West in the general election of 18 February 1982, repeating this performance in the general election of 24 November 1982. First appointed Chairman of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party in late 1982. He was elected lord mayor of Dublin in 1985–6, and became Leas-Cheann Comhairle again in 1987–92. In the general election of 17 February 1987 he was the third of four deputies returned for Dublin North-West and was the second to be elected TD for the constituency in the general election of 15 June 1989, only losing his seat in the general election of 1992. In electoral terms he was one of the most successful politicians of his generation, having held his seat for twenty-three years in eight successive general elections.
He served on a number of bodies, including the Eastern Regional Development Board (1970–79), the Dublin Vocational Education Committee (1974–9), Conradh na Gaelige, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the New Ireland Forum, Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, and the Vocational Teachers' Association. He served too as Co-Chairman of the British–Irish inter-parliamentary body and was a governor of the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin (later DCU).

By Gerry McElory, Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009) DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.008677.v1