Charlie Daly (Irish republican)

Charlie Daly (10 August 1896 - 14 March 1923) was the second son of Con. W. Daly, of Knockanescoulten, Firies, County Kerry. He went to school, first to Balyfinane National School, and later to the Christian Brothers at Tralee.^[1]

Daly had been an active member of the Irish Volunteers from 1913 before the Easter Rising and had risen to the rank of Commandant General and was the Officer Commanding the Second Northern Division of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Accompanied by Liam Lynch and George Lennon he was at the Mansion House on 7 January 1922 when a majority voted to accept the Treaty. He subsequently took the anti-treaty side in the Civil War.

On 2 November 1922, Charlie Daly was captured and imprisoned at Drumboe Castle in Donegal, where he was held until 16 January 1923, when he was court-martialled and sentenced to death and executed on 14 March 1923. Daniel Enright, Sean Larkin, and Timothy O'Sullivan were executed with him. Enright and O'Sullivan were also from Kerry. They were shot in retaliation for the death of a pro-treaty National Army soldier in an ambush.^[2]

His sister May Daly was a significant figure in Sinn Féin in Kerry up to the 1970s, she stood in the 1957 general election in Kerry North polling 3,171 votes.^[3]

One of his descendants, Mark Daly, was elected senator in 2007 for Fianna Fáil.^[4]

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