Former Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fail, Brian Cowen, was guest of honour at the annual Liam Mellows Commemorative Committee’s remembrance of Liam Mellows where he delivered the oration and laid a wreath at his grave in Castletown Cemetery.
Mr Cowen spoke of the bravery of Liam Mellows and how his execution, and that of his comrades, was a defining moment in Irish history.
He recalled the fight for Independence and how Liam Mellows had a vision for Ireland and was prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice at the age of 30 years.
Mass was celebrated in St. Patrick’s Church, Castletown, by Rev. Padraig Ó Cochlain, P.P. and afterwards flagbearers, Cllr Pip Breen, Padraig Kenny and Myles Carroll, lead a procession from the church to the adjoining cemetery.
Lorcan Allen welcomed Mr Cowen to Castletown and thanked him for being guest of the organising committee on this occasion.
The attendance included Deputies John Browne (Wexford) and Pat Casey (Wicklow), Senator Gerry Horgan from Dun Laoighaire-Rathdown, Cllrs Pip Breen, Joe Sullivan and Malcolm Byrne and John Fleming, Chairman New Ross Municipal District Council, and from Wicklow, Clls Pat Fitzgerald and Gail Dunne.
The ceremony was held in fine dry conditions and concluded with the Last Post on the bugle and the national anthem played by a lone piper.
At a function that followed in the Golden Anchor, Tony Clyne, Lorcan Allen and Pat Purcell, on behalf of the Liam Mellows Commemorative Committee presented Mr Cowen, who was Taoiseach, 2008-2011, with a copy of a local publication, Croghan to the Sea, a local history of Castletown, Coolgreany and the surrounding areas by Fiachra Ó Lionáin, to mark his visit to North Wexford.

HISTORICAL NOTE; Liam (William Joseph) Mellows, (May 25 1892 – December 8 1922), was an Irish republican and Sinn Féin politician, born in Lancashire to a British Army father. His mother was Sarah Jordan from Inch, in north Wexford.
He was active with the Irish republican Brotherhood and the Irish Volunteers and participated in the 1916 Easter Rising in Galway and participated in the war of Independence.
He was elected a TD in the first Dail in 1918, rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty and was captured by the pro-Treaty forces during the Irish Civil War.
Mellows was executed by firing squad at Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail along with Rory O’Connor, Joe McKelvey, Richard Barrett and others on December 8 1922.
He is buried in Castletown Cemetery.