Tree where de Valera had fateful conversation to be felled

A tree that marks the location of a conversation that changed the course of Irish history is dying and is to be removed by Dublin City Council.

It was under a horse chestnut tree on the corner of Appian Way and Leeson Street that revolutionary leader Thomas MacDonagh sought and failed to induct Éamon de Valera into the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the months leading up to the 1916 rebellion.

In his later years de Valera expressed the belief that if he had agreed to join the military council during that conversation, he would most certainly have been executed by the British authorities in the wake of the rebellion.

Had de Valera been executed he would not have gone on to become president of the executive council, taoiseach and president of the Republic, nor would he have introduced the 1937 Constitution which is still broadly in effect today.

Significance

Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív, a grandson of de Valera, heard the story of the tree’s significance from the former president himself over a meal in Áras An Uachtaráin, when Mr Ó Cuív was a teenager

“I remember it clearly. We lived at the time in Pembroke Park and I was the sixth child of nine, and he was telling us about that tree which I knew well because it was on the 11 bus route and around the corner from where my family lived,” he said.

“He was telling us about it because my mother wasn’t born until 1918. If Dev had accepted the offer from MacDonagh, who he looked up to, my future and that of my family would have been a blank page, because we wouldn’t have been there.”

Mr Ó Cuív said he understood MacDonagh lived in Ranelagh, while de Valera lived on Morehampton Terrace, close to Marlborough Road. He said it “would make sense that de Valera and MacDonagh would walk out from town together and separate at that corner where the tree is and have conversations there”.

Mr Ó Cuív said the issue went to the centre of the debate over why de Valera was not executed by the British after the failed rebellion. He said that recently released British papers confirmed that being born in the US had nothing to do with de Valera being spared execution.

Military council

“He wouldn’t surrender until MacDonagh confirmed the order. The delay meant that by the time Dev arrived [in Kilmainham Gaol], the [British prime minister HH] Asquith had expressed concern at the executions.”

The only ones executed “after Dev arrived” were Seán Mac Diarmada and James Connolly who were both members of the military council and signatories of the Proclamation, he said.

Mr Ó Cuív said it was “sad but inevitable” that the tree be removed and asked that the city council confirm the age of the tree by counting the rings.

The council said it proposed to "fell and stump grind a large mature horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) located at the junction of Appian Way and Leeson Street Upper. Due to the age and condition of this tree it has suffered severe dieback in recent months and there is now substantial dead growth in the tree crown."

A spokeswoman said: “A replacement tree is to be planted once the tree roots have sufficiently died back to allow a new tree to be planted.”