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
Mick Murphy (Sinn Féin politician) to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998. He was Sinn Féin spokesperson on Housing. He was again elected as a councillor for Newry and Mourne District Council from the Crotlieve electoral area in 2005. Mick Murphy (Sinn Féin politician) Michael Murphy (born 6 February 1942) is an Irish nationalist politician in Northern Ireland. Active in Irish republicanism after getting involved with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association of the 1960s, he worked as a publican. In 1996 he was elected as a member of the Northern Ireland Forum for Sinn Féin in South Down. Murphy was the unsuccessful Sinn Féin