Maurice Noel Hartnett (21 December 1909 – 4 October 1960) was an Irish politician, barrister, broadcaster and writer.
In 1946, the pair represented the deceased hunger-striker Seán McCaughey at an inquest into his death, which embarrassed the government of Éamon de Valera by exposing the poor conditions at Portlaoise Prison.
[4] Hartnett left Fianna Faíl soon after and joined Clann na Poblachta, the new political party founded by MacBride.
He narrated and appeared in Ireland's first political campaigning film, for Clann na Poblachta, called "Our Country".
Hartnett had failed to win the seat for the Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown constituency,[7] though there remained the possibility of appointment to the Seanad Éireann.
After a bill to fund a new Irish News Agency (with an anti-partition slant) was passed in 1949, MacBride's initial choice for head of the Agency was Hartnett but after a row with him he asked Conor Cruise O'Brien instead, a man who referred to Hartnett as "a dedicated republican propagandist."
[1] In June 1958, he failed in his second attempt to become a TD, this time representing the National Progressive Democrats in the Dublin South-Central constituency by-election.