Oldcastle to remember revolutionary 'Dail Girl'
Tim Mc Kenna, a relative of Kathleen McKenna, is due to unveil a 1916 memorial in Oldcastle next Saturday. The monument will remember all from Oldcastle and district who fought for Ireland from 1916 to 1923.
Kathleen McKenna worked as a member of the Propaganda Department Dáil Éireann during the War of Independence and she attended the Treaty negotiations as private secretary to Arthur Griffith in 1921.
Kathleen was born in 1897, the daughter of William and Mary (nee Hanley) in Oldcastle. Her father was a draper in 1901, who had changed to a hardware merchant by 1911.
On her summer holidays in Dublin in 1919, Kathleen called to the Sinn Féin headquarters at 6 Harcourt Street and presented a letter to Arthur Griffith from her father, a personal friend of Griffith. An expert typist, Kathleen began working for the Propaganda Department of the recently formed Dáil in October 1919. She secured work on the production of the Irish Bulletin, the daily summary of information edited for the First Dáil by Frank Gallagher for distribution to journalists in Dublin and abroad during the Irish War of Independence.
The Irish Bulletin was an underground publicity organ envisaged by Arthur Griffith and the Ministry of Propaganda, then under the direction of Desmond FitzGerald. McKenna typed every edition of it, from its founding on 11th November 1919, until the Truce, 11th July 1921.
In 1921 McKenna accompanied Arthur Griffith to London as his private secretary during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Kathleen had all the delegation sign a menu for a dinner on 10th November 1921.
McKenna was private secretary to various ministers of the Free State Government including Michael Collins, Desmond FitzGerald, Kevin O'Higgins and WT Cosgrave. In early 1922 she was sent to Paris for the Irish Race Congress. She was a private secretary at the Boundary Commission in 1924, and accompanied the Irish delegation at the Imperial Conference in 1926. McKenna resigned in 1931 to marry Capt Vittorio Napoli of the Italian Royal Grenadier Guards, moving to Libya and Albania before settling in Rome. She gave a talk on her revolutionary experiences on Radio Éireann in January 1952. Following her death at the age of 90 on 22nd March 1988, she was buried in Rome with the Irish flag, as she had requested.
She left a memoir of her days which was published in 2014 under the title 'A Dáil Girl’s Revolutionary Recollections'.
Oldcastle and District 1916 Commemoration Committee cordially invite all to unveiling of a memorial to people from Oldcastle and District who fought for Ireland from 1916 to 1923, on Saturday 17th September 2016 at Square, Oldcastle at 4.30pm.