Fionnán Sheahan

Fianna Fáil, by the way, the name itself, Eamon de Valera liked it and went for it.

It was a name, a little used name for the Irish volunteers, the forerunner of the IRA.

But he liked it.

His great collaborator, Sean Lemass, wanted to call it the Republican Party.

The compromise was they called it Fianna Fáil, the Republican Party.

One of the reasons de Valera really liked the name was it was very hard to pin down and translate directly.

It's soldiers of destiny to their opponents, sometimes soldiers of density.

It harked back to heroism and the Fianna and Fionn MacCool and all of that.

The point as well was that the reunification of Ireland at the time, just after the War of Independence and after the Civil War, we were obviously split.

So one of the party's core purposes was the reunification of the island.

Yeah, ending partition.

Not only that, but the restoration of the Irish language as the spoken language of the majority.

Aim number one, aim number two, total failures.

In the history a century on, neither one nor two has been achieved.

The Irish language has had a revival lately, but some of the revival is due now.

to the grassroots Irish language speakers opposing officialdom.

So quite the opposite.

Instead of being encouraged.

So certainly one could be quite cynical and say, well, there you are, fanophile, you know.

One, two, fail, fail.