Joe O'Connell (Irish republican) security wing of Portlaoise Prison, Ireland, in early 1998. They were presented by Gerry Adams to the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis as 'our Nelson Mandelas', and were released together with Brendan Dowd and Liam Quinn in 1999 as part of the Belfast Agreement. Joe O'Connell (Irish republican) Martin Joseph O'Connell (born 1951), better known as Joe, is an Irish republican and a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is most noted for having been a member of the Balcombe Street gang. O'Connell was born in Kilkee, in rural County Clare, 'a stronghold of Gaelic-speaking inhabitants
Tomás Mac Giolla Republican Army (IRA) around 1950. He was interned by the Irish government during the 1956–62 IRA Border Campaign. He also served a number of prison sentences in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. He married May Mac Giolla who died on 24 March 2018. At the 1961 general election, Mac Giolla unsuccessfully contested the Tipperary North constituency for Sinn Féin. In 1962 he became president of Sinn Féin and was one of the people who moved the party to the left during the 1960s. In 1969 Sinn Féin split and Mac Giolla remained leader of Official Sinn Féin. It was also in 1962