Killarney

By Sean Moriarty
The 100th anniversary of the death of Patrick McCarthy who died in the War of Independence was celebrated at the bridge that bears his name on Tuesday last.
McCarthy of College St was a member of the Killarney-based Fourth Battalion of the Kerry No. 2 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army.
He died on June 29, 1921 while on an active IRA mission, when a weapon was accidentally discharged. At the time ammunition was being transported from a remote area near Barraduff to an ambush site at the Blank Banks near Brosna
McCarthy’s brother Neilus and sister Hannah-Mary were also local Volunteers during the war. Their family ran a grocery and drapery store on College St.
The bridge over the River Flesk, known officially as the McCarthy O’Leary Bridge on the Muckross Road, is named after him and his IRA colleague Sean O’Leary who was killed a few months earlier in Moneygall, on the Tipperary and Offaly border.
“These are the people who gave their lives so we can have the freedoms we enjoy today,” said John Buckley, the regional administrator of the Killarney Sinn Féin Cumann.

Hero of 1921 War of Independence remembered

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