John Dignan

Dignan was a native of Ballygar, County Galway and educated locally at Esker, near Athenry, later attending St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, where he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Clonfert on 6 September 1903. His first appointment was to the staff of Garbally College where he served for twelve years, ten of them as President. [1]

A staunch nationalist, he had served in 1917 as president of the east Galway board of the Sinn Féin executive and was a central figure in the organisation of Sinn Féin courts in the county. [2]

In 1919 he became administrator of the parish of Abbey, Loughrea, becoming its parish priest in 1921. While there his house was raided and bombed by the Black and Tans, who targeted him as a known supporter of the independence movement. In 1923 he was appointed Parish Priest of Killimore but served only a short time before receiving his episcopal appointment.

On 24 March 1924 he was appointed Bishop of Clonfert. After his Episcopal ordination in June 1924 he gave an interview in which he declared himself a 'Republican' and that he hoped to see a 'reversion to the pre-Treaty days of Ireland'. He was the first Irish bishop to speak against the Treaty and articulate a pro-Sinn Fein perspective. [3] [4]

He was appointed chair of a government committee in 1936 by Sean T O'Kelly to examine social welfare provision in Ireland and would feature prominently in the development of government policy in this area for much of the next decade.[5] It has been suggested that he "campaigned relentlessly" for the introduction of state medical benefits including in personal meetings with Eamon de Valera and finally saw this being legislated for in 1942. [6] [7]

In 1944 he published Social Security: outlines of a scheme of national health insurance hailed at the time as Ireland's Beveridge plan and which ignited a debate about wider social welfare provision in the recently independent Ireland. It took discussion of social policy in twentieth century Ireland out of nineteenth century ideological notions such as 'poor law provision.' [8]

During his ministry as Bishop of Clonfert he had to content with the radical priest John Fahy whose campaign for the rights of small farmers in the years following Irish independence, won him many admirers. However Fahy's narrow-minded nationalism and vitriolic comments on Protestants, Jews and non-Irish people were considered outrageous for a cleric and Dignan had to discipline this controversial priest. [9]

• Lickmolassy by the Shannon, p. 201, John Joe Conwell, 1998, ISBN 0-9534776-0-6.