Mulcahy, Richard James

▪ Irish soldier and politician

born May 10, 1886, Waterford, County Waterford, Ire.

died Dec. 16, 1971, Dublin

      Irish Republican Brotherhood soldier, afterward (1944–59) leader of Fine Gael (“Gaelic Nation”), the major political party in opposition to Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Destiny”). Imprisoned for fighting in the Irish rebellion of 1916, Mulcahy later (December 1918) was elected to the British House of Commons as a member of the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”) party. In the same year he became chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers. Although he fought against the British until the truce of July 1921, he came to consider the Irish military situation hopeless, and he supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, by which the Irish Free State was established with British dominion status.

      Mulcahy was minister of defense (1922–24) under the first two Free State presidents, Arthur Griffith and William T. Cosgrave, and subsequently (1927–32) was minister for local government and public health, also under Cosgrave. From August 1922 he was commander in chief of the Free State armed forces, directing operations against the irregular Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the civil war. Succeeding Cosgrave as president of the Fine Gael party in January 1944, he resigned in October 1959 in favour of James Dillon. He was minister of education in John A. Costello's interparty governments of 1948–51 and 1954–57.

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