Bernard Brian O'Rourke (3 November 1874 – 1 July 1956) was an Irish politician and businessman from

Inniskeen Inniskeen, officially Inishkeen (), is a small village, townland and parish in County Monaghan, Ireland, close to the County Louth and County Armagh borders. The village is located about from Dundalk, from Carrickmacross, and from Crossmagl ...

County Monaghan County Monaghan ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is part of Border Region, Border strategic planning area of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town ...

. O'Rourke inherited a farm and

corn mill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separat ...

outside Inniskeen and acquired a larger mill in

Dundalk Dundalk ( ; ) is the county town of County Louth, Ireland. The town is situated on the Castletown River, which flows into Dundalk Bay on the north-east coast of Ireland, and is halfway between Dublin and Belfast, close to and south of the bor ...

. He bought

Belleek Pottery Belleek Pottery Ltd is a porcelain company that began trading in 1884 as the ''Belleek Pottery Works Company Ltd'' in Belleek, County Fermanagh, Ireland in what was to later become Northern Ireland. The factory produces Parian ware that is cha ...

in 1918 and co-founded

Arklow Pottery Arklow Pottery was an Irish pottery company which operated from 1934 to 1998. The company produced many decorative earthenware goods and general table crockery. History Arklow Pottery was founded in 1934 and formally opened by Seán Lemass (Min ...

in 1934. Initially a supporter of the

Irish Parliamentary Party The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP; commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party) was formed in 1874 by Isaac Butt, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nati ...

(IPP), he was elected to

Carrickmacross Carrickmacross () is a town in County Monaghan, Ireland. The population was 5,745 at the 2022 census of Ireland, 2022 census, making it the second-largest town in the county. Carrickmacross is a market town which developed around a castle buil ...

urban district council In England and Wales, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council (UDC), which shared local government responsibilities with a county council. ...

1899 Events January * January 1 ** Spanish rule formally ends in Cuba with the cession of Spanish sovereignty to the U.S., concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas.''The American Monthly Review of Reviews'' (February 1899), p ...

and

Monaghan County Council Monaghan County Council () is the local authority of County Monaghan, Ireland. As a county council, it is governed by the Local Government Act 2001. The council is responsible for housing and community, roads and transportation, urban planning ...

in 1905, and made a justice of the peace (JP) in 1906. He broke with the IPP when the

Irish Volunteers The Irish Volunteers (), also known as the Irish Volunteer Force or the Irish Volunteer Army, was a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by nationalists and republicans in Ireland. It was ostensibly formed in response to the format ...

split on the outbreak of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and IPP leader

John Redmond John Edward Redmond (1 September 1856 – 6 March 1918) was an Irish nationalism, Irish nationalist politician, barrister, and Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. He was best known as leader ...

advocated supporting the British war effort. For endorsing the 1916

Easter Rising The Easter Rising (), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an ind ...

, O'Rourke was interned and dismissed as a JP. During the

Irish War of Independence The Irish War of Independence (), also known as the Anglo-Irish War, was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army (1919–1922), Irish Republican Army (IRA, the army of the Irish Republic) and Unite ...

he was a

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judi ...

in the

Dáil Courts The Dáil Courts (also known as Republican Courts) were the judicial branch of government of the Irish Republic, which had unilaterally declared independence in 1919. They were formally established by a decree of the First Dáil on 29 June 192 ...

. He supported the 1921

Anglo-Irish Treaty The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (), commonly known in Ireland as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain an ...

. Several of his properties were damaged by anti-Treaty forces in the

Irish Civil War The Irish Civil War (; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) was a conflict that followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Emp ...

. After the 1922 creation of the

Irish Free State The Irish Free State (6 December 192229 December 1937), also known by its Irish-language, Irish name ( , ), was a State (polity), state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-ye ...

, O'Rourke was the fourth of 30 members of

Seanad Éireann Seanad Éireann ( ; ; "Senate of Ireland") is the senate of the Oireachtas (the Irish legislature), which also comprises the President of Ireland and Dáil Éireann (defined as the house of representatives). It is commonly called the Seanad or ...

elected by

members of the 3rd Dáil The 3rd Dáil was elected at the 1922 general election on 16 June and met on 9 September. On its formation, it was a Constituent Assembly in a Provisional Parliament. From 6 December 1922, Dáil Éireann was one of two houses of the Oireacht ...

, serving a nine-year term and being re-elected in 1931 for another nine years, cut short by the Seanad's 1936 abolition. He was a member of

Cumann na nGaedheal Cumann na nGaedheal (; ) was a political party in the Irish Free State, which formed the government from 1923 to 1932. It was named after the original Cumann na nGaedheal organisation which merged with the Dungannon Clubs and the National Co ...

and its successor

Fine Gael Fine Gael ( ; ; ) is a centre-right, liberal-conservative, Christian democratic political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland in terms of members of Dáil Éireann. The party had a member ...

, for which he stood unsuccessfully in the Monaghan constituency in the 1937 general election. He returned to the reconstituted Seanad at the April 1938 election on the

Industrial and Commercial Panel Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominat ...

. Except for a gap from 1925 to 1929, he remained a county councillor until 1945. O'Rourke married Clare Clinton in 1907; they had four daughters and three sons. His papers from the

Irish revolutionary period The revolutionary period in Irish history was the period in the 1910s and early 1920s when Irish nationalist opinion shifted from the Home Rule-supporting Irish Parliamentary Party to the republican Sinn Féin movement. There were several ...

were deposited at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

in 1993.

References

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Sources

Citations

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orourke, Brian 1874 births 1956 deaths Cumann na nGaedheal senators Fine Gael senators Members of the 1922 Seanad Members of the 1925 Seanad Members of the 1928 Seanad Members of the 1931 Seanad Members of the 1934 Seanad Members of the 2nd Seanad Politicians from County Monaghan Members of Monaghan County Council Irish Nationalist politicians Irish justices of the peace Irish company founders Businesspeople from County Monaghan 20th-century Irish businesspeople People from Inniskeen Fine Gael candidates in Dáil elections Industrial and Commercial Panel senators