Funeral of veteran Keating -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Sat, Oct 06 2007, 19:24:08 PDT
Author: To-day's Irish News (Belfast)
Subject: Funeral of veteran Keating
In reply to: Sinn F�in Poblachtach - Cork 's message, "Dan Keating R.I.P." on Tue, Oct 02 2007, 23:30:20 PDT

Irish News, (Belfast), Saturday, Oct, 6th 2007
Report by Allison Morris
Transcribed @ Civil Rights Veterans Office, Derry
Rights.civil@googlemail.com

Funeral of veteran Keating

TRIBUTES were paid yesterday at the funeral of the last survivor of the War of Independence.

Dan Keating died aged 105 on Tuesday after a short illness and was laid to rest following a low-key service in his native Co. Kerry.

At the time of his death he was Ireland�s oldest man.

Several hundred mourners attended the Requiem Mass at Kiltallagh Church.

Born in Castlemaine in January 1902, he joined the youth movement Fianna Eireann while in his teens and remained a steadfast hard-line republican throughout his life.

In the War of Independence he fought in the IRA�s Kerry brigades against the Black and Tans.

Keating, an IRA rifleman, was involved in two major attacks on the Auxiliaries, at Castlemaine and Castleisland, where up to 12 British troops were killed along with several IRA men.

Later he fought against the Free State forces in the Civil War in counties Limerick and Tipperary.

Keating was made a patron of hard-line Republican Sinn Fein in 2002 and party president Ruairi O�Bradaigh paid tribute to him at the funeral.

�During his long, healthy and adventurous lifetime, Dan has seen many splits and deviations from republican principles, but he had remained loyal and true, and there is no more fitting recipient of this honour than this noble son of Kerry�, he said.

In the early 1920s he was interned in Portlaoise jail and later in the Curragh.

He was also jailed in the 1930s on several occasions and after joining the small-scale sabotage campaign in England in 1939 he returned home and was again interned without trial at the Curragh, 1940-44.

Having spent a number of years working as a barman in Dublin he returned to his native Ballygamboon. Kerry in 1978.

Until his death he refused to accept a state pension because he considered the 26-County republic as an illegitimate state which usurped the 1916 Irish Republic.

In his last years he also refused the E2,5600 (�1,380) centenarians award over what he saw was as President Mary McAleese�s increasingly close relations with the British royal family.

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Replies:

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