Pièce 5 - Letter from Padraig Ó Caoimh to Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap.

Letter from Padraig Ó Caoimh, General Secretary of the GAA, to Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap., expressing his happiness on hearing that the bodies of Fr. Albert and Fr. Dominic will be repatriated to Ireland. He adds: ‘I had the honour and pleasure of serving mass for Fr. Dominic while in Parkhurst. Up to the time of the truce he was only allowed to say it every Sunday and after that daily … We were life long friends … the night before he left Cork and Ireland – he came to see me in a house where I was on the run’. Ó Caoimh joined the Irish Volunteers in 1916; three years later he gave up school teaching to become an officer with the Cork Brigade of the IRA. In 1920 he was appointed manager of the Employment Bureau established by the First Dáil. Soon afterwards, he was captured by the British and sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. He was released in 1922. In 1929 he resigned from his position as manager of a tobacco company following his appointment as General Secretary of the GAA, a position he held until 1964.