Death
Despite the truce, Costello was shot dead as he sat in his car on the North Strand Road in Dublin on 5 October 1977 by a member of the Official IRA, Jim Flynn who happened to be in the area at the time. The Official and Provisional IRAs both denied responsibility and Sinn Féin/The Workers' Party issued a statement condemning the killing. Members of an opposing INLA faction in Belfast also denied the killing. However, the INLA eventually deemed Flynn the person responsible, and he was shot dead in June 1982 in the North Strand, Dublin, very close to the spot where Costello died.
Costello is the only leader of an Irish political party murdered to date.
At the time of his death, he was a member of the following bodies:
- Wicklow County Council
- County Wicklow Committee of Agriculture
- General Council of Committees of Agriculture
- Eastern Regional Development Organisation
- National Museum Development Committee
- Bray Urban District Council
- Bray Branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union
- Bray and District Trade Unions Council (of which he was president 1976-77)
- Cualann Historical Society
as well as still holding the positions of
- Chairperson of the IRSP and
- Chief of Staff of the INLA.
His funeral was attended by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, the then president of Sinn Féin, Michael O'Riordan of the Communist Party of Ireland, Bernadette McAliskey and local Wicklow TDs Liam Kavanagh (Labour), Ciarán Murphy (Fianna Fáil) and Godfrey Timmins (Fine Gael). At his funeral, Senator Nora Connolly O'Brien, daughter of the Easter Rising leader James Connolly, gave the oration.
| “ | Of all the politicians and political people with whom I have had conversations, and whom I have had conversations, and who called themselves followers of Connolly, he was the only one who truly understood what James Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the Irish people | ” |
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—Nora Connolly O'Brien |
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Read more about this topic: Seamus Costello
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