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
Charlie Hurley (Irish republican) offered a promotion and a transfer to Haulbowline Island, but declined on the grounds that this entailed enlisting in the Royal Navy, albeit in a purely administrative role. Returning to Cork, he became friends with Liam Deasy who introduced him to the Irish republican movement. In 1917 he took a job at Castletownbere and it as there that he joined the Irish Volunteers in 1917. He was also a member of Sinn Fein, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League. In 1918 he was sentenced to five years penal servitude for possession of arms and plans of the British