[3] Mac Diarmada was born John MacDermott in Corranmore, close to Kiltyclogher in County Leitrim,[4] an area where the landscape was marked by reminders of poverty and oppression.

There was an ancient sweat-house, Mass rocks from the penal times and the persecutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and deserted abodes as an aftermath of the hunger of the 1840s.

[10][11] In November 1913 Mac Diarmada was one of the original members of the Irish Volunteers, and continued to work to bring that organisation under IRB control.

[12] In May 1915 Mac Diarmada was arrested in Tuam, County Galway, under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 for giving a speech against enlisting into the British Army during the First World War.

[15] Due to his disability, Mac Diarmada took little part in the fighting of Easter week, but was stationed at the headquarters in the General Post Office (GPO), as one of the Provisional Republican Government.

Min, a founder of Cumann na mBan, managed to escape from Ireland to America;[21] she later married Richard Mulcahy.

Before his execution Mac Diarmada shared a cell with the Irish Volunteers leader from Wexford Robert Brennan who asked MacDiarmada if he was satisfied with the rising.

In his hometown of Kiltyclogher a statue inscribed with his final written words – see above – was erected in the village centre, and his childhood home has become a National Monument.

[24] [25] The building which holds the national bus station (Busáras) and the Department of Social Protection is known as Áras Mhic Dhiarmada.