Michael O'Flanagan States in April 1925 to help Sinn Féin contest a number of by-elections. That summer he was suspended from clerical duties and forbidden to say mass because of his nationalist activities and anti-clerical speeches he had made in America. In March 1926, the Sinn Féin ard fheis narrowly defeated de Valera's proposal to enter the Free State Oireachtas if the Oath of Allegiance were removed. O'Flanagan sided with the majority. De Valera left to found Fianna Fáil, which eclipsed Sinn Féin at the June 1927 election. O'Flanagan remained with the reduced Sinn Féin. Bishop Coyne died in July 1926, but
Sinn Féin Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( ; ; is a left-wing Irish republican political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. It took its current form in 1970 after a split within the party (with the other side becoming the Workers' Party of Ireland) and has historically been associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mary Lou McDonald has been party president since February 2018. Sinn Féin is the largest nationalist party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the joint-largest overall (alongside the Democratic