The greatest Irish person...

feargale

LordSutch wrote: »

Arthur Guinness.

Jaypers, Sutch. I think you have a deathwish for this nation! What were you on when you voted for Arthur?

LordSutch wrote: »

T Swift.
W.B.Yeates.

Good, yes, but greatest Irish person? I'm thinking of writing a few ditties myself to get on the list.

LordSutch wrote: »

John Hume.

Now you're talking. He devoted his life to achieving human rights by constitutional means, and committed political suicide to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

LordSutch wrote: »

Mary Robinson

Hmmm.[/quote]

Arcade_Tryer wrote: »

Beggars belief that a poll including Irish writers excludes Beckett.

Yes, and Jem Casey.

Atoms for Peace

Voted for Parnell, one of the greatest politicians to have sat in Westminster. As an individual he had the power to change the history of this nation like no other, sadly it slipped from his grasp due to a scandal and the politicing of the rcc.
Honourable mention to Noel Browne and tk Whitaker.

Atoms for Peace

LordSutch wrote: »

Not sure I would have included Countess Markievicz in the poll. One thing I learnt during all the 1916 stuff last year was that she murdered a police constable in St Stephen's Green!
Apparently he asked her & her comrades to move along, so she promptly pulled out a gun & shot him dead. There have been other accusations about her too involving her & her gun, so I wouldn't hold her up as one of Ireland's greatest people.

Yet Michael Collins is no. 1 on the poll, dozens of g men and peelers were killed on his orders.

FrancieBrady

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

Yet Michael Collins is no. 1 on the poll, dozens of g men and peelers were killed on his orders.

A poll that has Collins on it and doesn't have McGuinness on it for no other reason than Joe Duffyesque small mindedness devalues itself immediately. Hilarious again and again when those that fought for us win these things.

HalloweenJack

Of those on the list, Noel Browne is the one who most impressed me from what I've read about him.

Here we go

My original gut feeling is to say Collins but reading some of the posts I'm not sure I do think Collins is the most important Irish person for what it means to Ireland some have done stuff that may not effect Ireland or Irish people in the way Collins did but do effect how the world works in science and literature

maryishere

Here we go wrote: »

...but reading some of the posts I'm not sure I do think Collins is the most important Irish person for what it means...

The thread is the "greatest", not the most important.

It could be argued that Hitler was the most important German who ever lived, given his effect on world history, but probably few people would think he was the "greatest".

Extremist muslims would think the bombers who killed people on the London underground on 7 July 2005 as "heroes" of the "greatest" while extremist republicans would think unrepentant IRA leaders (eg McGuinness) (leaders at the time of previous bombings which also killed innocent people) as "heroes" or the "greatest" too.

Everyone can gave their own intepretation of what "the greatest" is or was.

FrancieBrady

The 'greatest' allow the 'important' the freedom to be Irish and to work for the Irish by sarcrifice.
That's why they continually win these polls.

A Little Pony

A Little Pony wrote: »

Imagine comparing the great Winston Churchill to Martin Mcguinness. One who helped in the Allied effort to stop Nazi Germany and inspired his people to resist Nazi invasion and the other a terrorist murdering dirtbag.

Ah the hilarious English jingoist "measurement of greatness based on how much they resisted the Nazis" (after September 1939, of course - collaborating with/appeasing the Nazis between 1932 and 1939 was grand in Britain).

Seeing as Winston - superstar racist, imperialist, mass murderer, Kurd-gassing, inveterate Hibernophobe and the economic illiterate who directly made millions of British people unemployed by tying sterling to the gold standard in 1925 - was, compared to Stalin, a minor figure in WW II when it came to defeating the Nazis can we expect that Joseph Stalin is the most admirable person ever in your view?

Martin McGuinness comes out very well indeed when compared to the values, ideology and actions of your beloved Churchill.

maryishere

Deleted User wrote: »

a minor figure in WW II

Do not think he was really that minor as he was the leader of the UK...you may remember that the UK and its commonwealth allies were alone in standing up to Hitler in 1940, and if they had not, it is likely you would be speaking German or Russian, (if your ancestors were not killed working on the autobahn to the far east ie useful extermination).

The dreadful news a few weeks ago of 4 or 5 killed following a terrorist outrage in London reminded me of a time when McGuinnesses IRA would have been claiming responsibility for such a death toll.

Zirconia

Jean McConville

Ken.

There's the poll changed to what it basically boils down to cause if I could put 100 choices on it someone would look for the one person that was missed out.

Murrisk

Even though he was a Fianna Fáil politician, I have great respect for Donogh O'Malley for the reforms he brought about in the education system, making it much more inclusive and equitable.

Murrisk

Murrisk wrote: »

Even though he was a Fianna Fáil politician, I have great respect for Donogh O'Malley for the reforms he brought about in the education system, making it much more inclusive and equitable.

Plenty of Fianna Fáil politicians did great good. Aside from O'Malley and Seán Lemass, the first five years of De Valera's first government (1932-1937) was extraordinarily socially radical, and in the first decade of that rule no fewer than 132,000 social houses were built by his government. And that was during the Great Depression. What excuse does the government of 2017 have?

In cities, particularly Dublin, this finally meant the destruction of some of the worst slums in western Europe. DeValera's first government was absolutely, certainly a far more socially progressive government than the CnaG/FG government which preceeded it (1922-1932), a government which believed in low taxation, low public services and thus the perpetuation of enormous poverty in this state - as late as 1927 an entire Irish family was found dead from starvation (becoming the subject of Peadar O'Donnell's best-selling novel Adrigoole).

When DeValera got in, he had the courage to tackle this - and for that he gained the understandable wrath of big farmers, shopkeepers and the like who had been creaming it under CnaG/FG. The fact that in 1938 DeValera's government was the first government in western Europe to win a majority of the votes (i.e. not merely a majority of seats) speaks volumes for the respect in which he was held at the time, while his Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1938 ensured this state would not be sending Irish people to die for the British Empire, unlike the overfed Home Rule lackeys such as John Redmond did in 1914-1918. And then there's his constitution, which trusted the people enough to give them powers which every other EU state has given to parliament (the reason why we have the right to so many referenda).

But it's not fashionable with a certain crowd to point anything positive out about DeValera these days, no matter how historically accurate it is.

Ash.J.Williams

http://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/719/mick-murphy-the-last-convict-of-the-road