Michael Derham

Michael James Derham (died 20 November 1923) was an Irish Sinn Féin and later Cumann na nGaedhael Party politician who served for two years as a TD for the Dublin County constituency.

He was returned unopposed as one of six Sinn Féin candidates at the 1921 general election to the new House of Commons of Southern Ireland, which had been established under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. In common with the other Sinn Féin members elected, he did not take his seat in the short-lived new Commons, sitting instead in the revolutionary Second Dáil.

Derham was re-elected as a Pro-Treaty Sinn Féin candidate at the 1922 general election, and as a candidate for the new Cumann na nGaedhael party at the 1923 election on 27th August. He died less than three months later, on 20th November, triggering Dáil Éireann's fourth-ever by-election, which was won on 19 March 1924 by the Cumann na nGaedhael candidate, Batt O'Connor.[1]