A native of Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry, Fionán Lynch worked as a teacher in Dublin, where he was sworn in to the IRB and co-founded Na hAisteoirí, a theatre group dedicated to producing plays in Irish. He later joined the Irish Volunteers, becoming Captain of F Company in the 1st Dublin Battalion. After briefly leaving the Volunteers in order to maintain his teaching job, he rejoined before Easter 1916 and was put in charge of keeping Bulmer Hobson under armed guard over the Easter weekend, something which he later described as a “most unpleasant duty”. He participated in the Rising itself, setting up a barricade on Upper Church St. and later took part in intense fighting in the North King St. area. Imprisoned a number of times over the following years, he was elected as a Sinn Féin TD for Kerry South in December 1918. He aided the Irish delegation as an assistant secretary during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations of 1921 and held the position of Minister for Education in the subsequent provisional government. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Lynch served as a vice-commandant of the south-western division, operating in his native Kerry. He continued as a TD until 1944, when he was appointed as a circuit court judge, a position he held until his retirement in 1959.
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