Kieran Doherty

Kieran Doherty (16 October 1955 – 2 August 1981) was an Irish republican hunger striker and politician who served as a TD for Cavan–Monaghan from June 1981 to August 1981. He was a volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Background Doherty was the third son in a family of six. He was born in the Andersonstown area of Belfast. He was educated at St. Theresa's Primary School and Glen Road Christian Brothers School (CBS). The Doherty brothers were known cyclists and sportsmen in the Andersontown area; Kieran won an Antrim Gaelic football medal at minor level in 1971.

Doherty joined Fianna Éireann in Autumn 1971, quickly being recruited into the Provisional IRA thereafter. Kieran's brothers Michael and Terence were interned between 1972 and 1974.

Paramilitary activity In August 1976, while he was out to set a bomb, the van he was in was chased by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). During the chase Doherty managed to leave the van and hijack a car. He later ditched the car some streets away and was found away from the car.

Election to Dáil Éireann While on hunger strike he was elected as an Anti H-Block TD for Cavan–Monaghan at the 1981 general election, which was held in Ireland on 11 June. He received 9,121 (15.1%) first preference votes and was elected on the fourth count. Doherty is the shortest-serving Dáil deputy ever, having served as a TD for two months. The two seats gained by Anti H-Block candidates denied Taoiseach Charles Haughey the chance to form a government, and the 22nd Dáil saw a Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition government come to office, with Garret FitzGerald as Taoiseach.

Legacy

He is commemorated on the Irish Martyrs Memorial at Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, Australia. Decades earlier, another hunger striker, Joseph Whitty (aged 19), likewise died on 2 August, during the 1923 Irish Hunger Strikes. In October 2016, a painting of him was unveiled in Leinster House by Sinn Féin.

He is buried in the republican plot at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.