12/11/2025
Eoin Mac Néill and Partition
One hundred years ago this month Eoin Mac Néill, probably the most well known historical figure laid to rest in Kilbarrack Cemetery, was at the centre of a major political storm. He was the Free State representative on the Boundary Commission set up under the Treaty and which, according to Michael Collins, was going to transfer large nationalist areas of Northern Ireland Ireland to the Free State.
On the Commission Mac Néill was up against the British appointed chairman and the Unionist government appointee. It is generally agreed by historians that he was weak and ineffective. He failed to object when the draft Commission report proposed to make minimal changes to the border and even to transfer some Free State areas to the North. The report was leaked to a British newspaper in November 1925 and in the uproar Mac Néill had to resign from the Cabinet.
Ten years before the Boundary Commission collapse, Mac Néill, as president of the Irish Volunteers, published a pamphlet called ‘Shall Ireland be Divided?’ in which he said: “I urge the Irish people to permit no surrender on the partition question.”
Mac Néill himself did the opposite to his own advice. And his former Cabinet colleagues, after the Commission collapsed, did a financial deal with the British government in London which left the Border as it was and effectively abandoned nationalists in the Six Counties.
Eoin’s son Brian opposed the Treaty and Partition. He was one of six IRA volunteers killed after their capture by Free State forces in the mountains of Co. Sligo in September 1922. Father and son lie in the same grave in Kilbarrack Cemetery.
