Former Mayo councillor Gerry Ginty.
“I will not stand silent and allow Sinn Féin rewrite history”
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Former Mayo councillor Gerry Ginty.
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The cover of the controversial new book, ‘Ireland’s Hunger Strike Martyrs’ by Constantine B. Darcy.
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The late Frank Stagg.
Published:
Sun 6 Sep 2026, 10:12 AM
A FORMER Mayo Sinn Fèin elected representative has moved to set the record straight on the controversial reinterment at Leigue Cemetery in Ballina of Hollymount IRA hunger-strike prisoner Frank Stagg on November 5, 1977.
Retired councillor Gerry Ginty reveals his central role in the re-interment operation in a chapter of Constantine B. Darcy’s newly-published book, Ireland’s Hunger Strike Martyrs, an account that is in complete opposition to what his old party has been portraying for decades.
The Ballina man, how in his early 80s, is also critical of the recent theatrical production about Stagg, ‘We Have Him Back!’, which he regards ‘a distortion of history’.
Ginty said Sinn Féin, in trying to revert to its republican roots, “is now disrespecting the fallen IRA volunteers and their families to feed their political hunger of getting Sinn Féin elected.”
He elaborated: “They are very anxious now to say the IRA had sanctioned the removal of Frank Stagg’s remains because of the political credit to be gained from it.
“I can say to any of them that I will not stand silent and allow them to rewrite history.”
He added the irony was that he was a Sinn Féin councillor at the time and nobody from the party had every approached him about reinterring Frank Stagg’s remains.
“Now they are performing a stage play that is completely indifferent to what actually happened,” he added
In a chapter in Darcy’s book, Ginty gives a hands-on account of his decision to organise and carry out the reinterment of Stagg’s remains from ‘a free-state grave’ at Leigue Cemetery, in which he had been buried on February 21, 1976, to the republican plot in the graveyard beside his fellow hunger striker Michael Gaughan on November 5, 1977.
Ginty revealed: “Sinn Féin had no part in the operation despite their promise that they would honour Frank Stagg’s dying wish to be laid to rest in the republican plot of Leigue Cemetery. Although I was a member of the party at the time, I was disappointed by its failure in coming forward.
“The reinterment operation had been on my mind from the day that Frank’s mother, Mary, had asked Joe Cahill and I to promise her that we would honour Frank’s request. I promised myself that as soon as An Garda Siochána ended their supervision of Frank’s grave, I would, to the best of my ability, honour that request.”
In his chapter in the book, he wrote: “I was aware that we would have only one chance to carry it out. It had to be top secret, otherwise the Free State would have been tumbling down on top of us. I let things settle for a number of months, then set about organising the operation.
“It had to be on a Saturday and hopefully a moonless night. The importance of a Saturday night was that the guards would be busy uptown. Several guards were also off-duty for the weekend. So the decision was made to make it the night of November 5, 1977.
“We reckoned that we needed five of six men. I had my own man, Con Ryan. I explained all this to George Stagg and he said he could get three men, so that was six. Me, Con, George, Sean Commiskey, a Co. Meath man, Jimmy Doyle, George’s brother-in-law, and Paul Stanley, Kildare.
“I made it clear to George not a word to anyone. No one but not one was to know. He understood what I was getting at; this was, more or less, an IRA operation and a very dangerous one at that.
“The next problem I saw was that if the concrete the free staters put over the grave, which may be a metre deep, could have gone down the sides of the coffin and locked it in.
“What we knew from P.J. Dolan, the grave digger, was that he reckoned they didn’t dig down to the coffin before pouring the concrete. His assertion was right.
“Anyway, the biggest problem I really envisaged was opening the republican plot to receive the remains, which bothered me the most. And also that wonder and suspicion would be created by anyone who saw us working there. The republican plot was clearly visible from a distance.
“It would be no easy job and would take some time. We had assumed that no one else would be going into the grave so soon after Michael Gaughan (June 9, 1974), so we had concreted over that grave fairly well. We put four of five inches of cement over it.
“We never in our wildest dreams could have envisaged two hunger strikers being buried in Leigue Cemetery during the same campaign.
“When you consider there were 12 Irishmen who died on hunger strike during the troubles and two of them are buried in Ballina, you know it’s unreal, it’s surely a coincidence.
“After a sweltering few hours, we broke the concrete. My God, the thumping on the concrete was louder that we had expected and I sad to Con: “We will wake up the dead.”
“We were not going to renege on the job, so we had no option but to make the impossible possible. And when we completed the task, we recited some prayers for our fallen comrade and, with a goodbye and a sign of the cross, we silently parted company (around 12 midnight, having started at 4.30) and went our own way.
“The careful planning had paid off. Most of it I planned, to be honest with you. But it was no easy job, the night was stormy and wet.
“After we left, George Stagg rang his mother to tell her the news, he also rang RTÉ. When the news broke, I can tell you that IRA headquarters were as surprised as Liam Cosgrave (Taoiseach) and Patrick Cooney (Minister for Justice).”
Ginty said they carried out the operation ‘not for the reason everyone would have seen it as: to strike a blow against the government or anything like that.
“The true reason was that I promised Frank’s mother Mary on the day of the republican funeral that we would fulfil Frank’s request for him to be buried beside his comrade Michael Gaughan in the republican plot,” he explained.
The Book, Ireland’s Hunger Strike Martyrs, was published by D.TOTI Publications and is available at local book shops.
Published:
Sun 6 Sep 2026, 10:12 AM