'Deafening silence' over IRA-named gaelic contest being promoted by Feile an Phobail

That is the view of the DUP group leader on Belfast City Council Sarah Bunting, who was commenting on the Joe Cahill Gaelic Competition for under-13s.

The contest is named after Joe Cahill, one of the founding members of the Provisional IRA and is due to take place tomorrow in Belfast, with the website of the publicly-funded annual Feile festival carrying details and referring people to the GAA for tickets.

Councillor Bunting told the News Letter: “The silence from wider nationalism and so-called ‘civic society’ in Northern Ireland towards such events is deafening.

"Events such as this associated with the Feile are a symptom of that acceptance of celebrating individuals who dragged Northern Ireland into decades of terrorism and pain.

“If Feile truly wished to be inclusive and welcoming then they would be moving away from an association with such events rather than including them in their programme.”

​The fact the Feile is promoting the tournament has sparked a wave of criticism online over recent days, so Belfast City Council was asked, as one of the festival’s core funders, whether it wanted to respond to this criticism.

It issued a brief statement saying how “inclusive” the festival is.

“Féile an Phobail has received funding via the council’s Cultural Multi-Annual Grants scheme for four years (2020-2024) to support a programme of 250+ inclusive arts and cultural activities over a number of days each year,” it said.

"Our funding to Féile for their August programme through this particular grant scheme this year is £244,000.”

Sinn Fein's newsletter An Phoblacht says the contest was started in 2004 (just after Cahill's death) "as a fitting memorial to one of Ireland’s finest men [and a] veteran IRA volunteer".

It is not clear if 2024 is the first year the Feile has been involved in promoting it, but it would not be the first republican GAA event in the Feile's recent calendar.

Last year the Feile promoted the "Joe McDonnell football tournament" in Hannahstown, named after a man who was imprisoned for blowing up a furniture shop, then getting into a shootout with police.

So who is Joe Cahill?

According to the book ‘Provos’ by Peter Taylor, Cahill had been active in the border campaign of the 1950s, but quit after becoming "bitterly opposed to the numbers of communists and Marxists" in the IRA’s ranks, regarding them as "unGodly".

But after a de facto coup against the Dublin leadership in 1969 and the split into the OIRA and PIRA, Cahill returned and "went on to become the Officer Commanding of the IRA's Belfast brigade in the early 70s, and is now the father figure of the Republican movement" (he briefly served as PIRA "chief of staff" too).

The book adds that on March 28, 1973, "the Irish navy arrested Joe Cahill just off the coast of Waterford on board a Cyprus-registered boat, the Claudia".

It went on: "In its hold were 250 rifles, 240 small arms, and a quantity of anti-tank mines and explosives. They had come from Libya following trips to Col Khaddhafi's revolutionary regime…

"Cahill was convicted of IRA membership and illegal importation of arms and sentenced to three years' 'penal servitude'."

In 2023, the then-Belfast Lord Mayor Tina Black attended the opening ceremony of the Joe Cahill cup, clad in her gold chain of office.

The Feile was approached for comment but none had been received at time of writing.