When Kathleen arranged for a substitute teacher to cover for her while she recovered from the loss of their child, she received a financial penalty from her employers for doing so.

O'Connell was furious, and as a leading member of the INTO set upon a vigorous campaign to have the rule that prompted the fine removed.

O'Connell was able to use the old UIL connections of his father to contact John Dillon and other Irish MPs to raise the issue in the House of Commons,[4] and eventually, the rule was dropped.

[5] In Mayo, O'Connell relied on the support of Teachers, migrant workers on Achill Island who were reckoned to better understand what a labour party stood for than other parts of Ireland, and the support of the area around his family's homeland of South Mayo: Bekan, Knock and Ballyhaunis.

In August 1927, Fianna Fáil decided to enter the Dáil and it gave its support to the Labour Party's motion of no confidence in the Cumann na nGaedheal government.

The plan was to replace it with a Labour-National League Party coalition supported by Fianna Fáil, with Labour leader Thomas Johnson as President of the Executive Council.

When the vote was taken, John Jinks, a National League TD, failed to attend; another, Vincent Rice, crossed the floor to Cumann na nGaedheal.

The act would allow the government to establish a military tribunal for hearing political cases as well as the right to suspend constitutional guarantees on their own discretion.

It came in response to rising Irish Republican Army activity across the country but Labour and its members feared greatly it would trample civil liberties.

O'Connell denounced the bill in the Dáil, declaring it made a farce of the institution and that Cumann na Gaedhael might as well establish a military dictatorship in Ireland while they were at it.

Ultimately the County Council refused to offer the position, on the stated reason she could not speak Irish but, as many felt, with the subtext being she was denied on account of being a Protestant.

Perhaps surprisingly, the normally avowed non-sectarian Labour was amongst those opposing the appointment, with O'Connell working with the likes of the Archbishop of Tuam to advocate against it.