Joseph MacDonagh (18? -1922) was born in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary. His brother, Thomas was one of the seven signatories of the Easter Proclamation of 1916. He was executed on May 3, 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising by the British Army.

An insurance broker, Joseph was also a member of Sinn Féin. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis of that year he was elected to the Sinn Féin Executive at which the party was re-constituted as a Republican party with Eamon de Valera as President. Joseph was elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin MP for the constituency of Tipperary North.

He was appointed Minister for Labour and Economic Affairs in the Second Ministry of the Irish Republic. He was re-elected unopposed in the 1921 General Election to the Second Dáil. During this time he oversaw the Belfast Boycott campaign, a response to the forced eviction of many Catholics out of Belfast at the hands of the B-Specials. Margaret Browne who was directly running the campaign later married Seán MacEntee then a senior commander in the Belfast IRA.

MacDonagh opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was re-elected in the 1922 General Election. He did not contest any subsequent election having died on Christmas Day 1922.

Pierce McCann (1882-1919) was born in Prospect Lodge, New Ross, County Wexford. He was a gentleman farmer and farmed at Dualla near Cashel, County Tipperary. A founder member of Sinn Féin he was President of the Tipperary Sinn Féin Executive from 1906 onwards. He joined the Gaelic League in 1909 and was a member of the Irish Volunteers from 1914 onwards. He was arrested after the Easter Rising and imprisoned in Reading jail and a number of other prisons in England and Wales through 1916 and 1917.

He resumed his involvement with Sinn Féin after his release and was selected to contest the constituency of Tipperary East in the forthcoming general election. He was arrested in May 1918 under the premise of the so-called German Plot and while incarcerated was elected as a Sinn Féin MP in the 1918 Westminster Election. He never sat in Dáil Éireann and died in prison in 1919 a victim of the influenza epidemic of that year. His fiancé later married James MacNeill.

Seamus Aloysius Burke (1893-1967) was born in County Tipperary on June 14, 1893. Politicised after the events of the Easter Rising he was elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin MP for the constituency of Tipperary Mid. Burke was re-elected at each subsequent election for Sinn Féin, Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin, Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael until 1938.

Re-elected in the 1921 General Election, he supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1923 he was appointed Minister for Local Government and Public Health, though was a non-member of the Executive Council. From 1927 to 1932 he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance.

Following the Fianna Fáil election victory in the 1932 General Election he entered the opposition benches. Following his defeat in the 1938 General Election he retired from politics. He continued with his legal career as he was a barrister-at-law. He died on New Year’s Day, 1967.

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President. Pádraíg Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.

We declare that we desire our country to be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all, which alone can secure permanence of Government in the willing adhesion of the people.

We affirm the duty of every man and woman to give allegiance and service to the Commonwealth, and declare it is the duty of the Nation to assure that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the Nation's labour.

It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland.

The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefor a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation's aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration. Likewise it shall be the duty of the Republic to take such measures as will safeguard the health of the people and ensure the physical as well as the moral well-being of the Nation.

It shall be our duty to promote the development of the Nation's resources, to increase the productivity of its soil, to exploit its mineral deposits, peat bogs, and fisheries, its waterways and harbours, in the interests and for the benefit of the Irish people.

It shall be the duty of the Republic to adopt all measures necessary for the recreation and invigoration of our Industries, and to ensure their being developed on the most beneficial and progressive co-operative and industrial lines. With the adoption of an extensive Irish Consular Service, trade with foreign Nations shall be revived on terms of mutual advantage and goodwill, and while undertaking the organisation of the Nation's trade, import and export, it shall be the duty of the Republic to prevent the shipment from Ireland of food and other necessaries until the wants of the Irish people are fully satisfied and the future provided for.

It shall also devolve upon the National Government to seek co-operation of the Governments of other countries in determining a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour.

The Proclamation of
Poblacht na h-Éireann
The Provisional Government

of the
Irish Republic

To the People of Ireland

Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.


Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers, and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.


We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish republic as a sovereign independent state, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.


The Irish republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.


Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent national government, representative of the whole people of Ireland, and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the republic in trust for the people.


We place the cause of the Irish republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.


Signed on behalf of the provisional government,
THOMAS J CLARKE, SEAN MACDIARMADA,
THOMAS MACDONAGH, P H PEARSE,
EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT.