Patrick Shea CB, OBE, FRSA (27 April 1908 – 31 May 1986)[1] was a Northern Irish civil servant and the first Roman Catholic since A. N. Bonaparte-Wyse in the 1920s to achieve the rank of permanent secretary of a government department in Northern Ireland.
One of his earliest memories was being taken by his father to watch the celebrations in the Phoenix Park, Dublin that followed the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912.
[2] This would have established a devolved parliament in Dublin after it had completed its passage through the House of Lords which it was due to do by 1914.
However, the outbreak of World War I caused Home Rule to be suspended for the war's duration, and following the Easter Rising of 1916, the subsequent success of Sinn Fein at the 1918 General Election and its establishment of a provisional government in Dublin in 1919 the Bill was never put into effect.
[3]Following the disbandment of the RIC in 1922 upon the creation of the Irish Free State via the Anglo-Irish Treaty/Partition of Ireland, Shea's father joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary, attaining the rank of head constable and later clerk of petty sessions in Newry, County Down, where the family later lived.