For decades a group calling itself the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) has held a ceremony at the Mansion House in Dublin that its members call “the turning of the sovereign seal”.
During the short ritual, IRB president Billy McGuire holds up a golden harp before turning it around seven times. According to IRB lore, this must happen every year to reaffirm the sovereignty of Ireland.
The leaders of the IRB claim this organisation is no different from the secret-oath-bound society of the same name that played a key role in Irish independence a century ago.
Over the years the turning of the seal ceremony has been tolerated by city authorities as, at worst, a harmless nonsense by a group with a tenuous grasp of Irish history. Most years McGuire has been allowed to conduct the ceremony inside the Mansion House itself.
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In recent years, however, a new cohort has taken over the IRB, turning it into an organisation steeped in the pseudo-legal language of the sovereign citizen movement, which believes, in basic terms, that citizens are not subject to State laws. This has caused officials in Dublin and nationally to become increasingly nervous about the group’s intentions.
The leaders of the modern IRB are in large part veterans of the Covid-19 anti-mask and anti-lockdown campaigns, along with property owners who turned to the conspiracy theories after losing vast sums during the crash. Its leaders include a prominent Clare businessman, a teacher, a healthcare worker and a life coach.
[ ‘Serious concerns’ over conspiracy theory group forming shadow system of county councils ]
This version of the IRB is now in the process of establishing a shadow government to run in parallel with what it calls the “corporate government” in Leinster House. It has a cabinet of ministers (which it calls secretaries), a nascent court system and a network of local government bodies. It has also adopted a new time zone, called Irish Rising Time, which is 25 minutes slower and based on the time zone used in Dublin until the 1916 rising.
It even claims control over Óglaigh na hÉireann, the official Irish name of the Defence Forces. Some members have been appointed “generals”, and the organisation flies the flags of the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps at its ceremonies. The IRB’s leaders have registered themselves, through the Companies Registration Office, as the official owners of the Óglaigh na hÉireann title. A spokesman for the Department of Defence declined to comment except to say that since last year it is an offence to use the term Óglaigh na hÉireann “other than where such use is authorised by law”.
In spite of its military aspirations, the IRB does not claim to be an armed group. In a 2023 meeting of its “supreme council”, members agreed there was no need for the “spilling of blood”. Instead, according to the minutes, it was agreed that the IRB’s struggle against the Government would be a “paper war”.
The original Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret, oath-bound society whose members included many of the leaders of the Irish independence movement in the early 20th century, including Patrick Pearse and Michael Collins. It played a key behind-the-scenes role in the struggle for independence before, according to all credible histories, officially disbanding in 1924, two years after it split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
According to the version of history adopted by members of the modern IRB, the organisation persisted under the leadership of a man called Tom McGuire, who conducted the first turning-of-the-seal ceremony in 1919. The story goes that in the early 1950s, McGuire transferred the IRB presidency to his seven-year-old grandnephew Billy McGuire, who has held the position since.
This version of events has left some historians scratching their heads. “If there was a Tom McGuire around in 1919, he was nobody important,” says historian Owen McGee, author of The IRB: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Féin.
The turning of the seal “means nothing and has nothing to do with anything historical”, he says. The only possible exception was an effort by Éamon de Valera during the Civil War to obtain the seal used by the first Dáil to stamp documents. But this was an actual seal, rather than the harp used by the modern IRB. The real IRB, being a secret society, did not have a seal, says McGee.
Meet ‘the cabinet’
During the Covid-19 pandemic, McGuire encountered John Flanagan, a Co Clare businessman who operated a chain of hotels in the west before the financial crash. Flanagan claims to have been before the courts more than any person in Ireland, often representing himself and employing sovereign citizen legal strategies.
Flanagan’s many civil hearings include a case taken in 2017 by his company Diamrem Ltd against Clare County Council. Diamrem is seeking €15 million in damages from the council for opening a car park at the Cliffs of Moher, which it claims scuppered its nearby private car park.
With McGuire’s blessing, Flanagan took over as chairman of the IRB’s supreme council in February 2022. He also became the secretary for finance and defence and “commander in chief” of the military. Other figures who had been prominent in opposing the government’s Covid-19 measures followed. Former UCD professor Dolores Cahill, who claimed children who wore face masks would have lower IQ, was appointed as “chief justice” (she was later ousted from the role and replaced by a builder from Mayo).
HSE physiotherapist Anna Marie Stack Rivas, who was subject to a fitness-to-practise inquiry after speaking out against Covid-19 vaccines, became secretary for public health. Barra de Róiste, a primary schoolteacher who refused to enforce mask rules in class, was appointed education secretary.
Howard Hughes, a “life and executive coach” was put in charge of foreign affairs, making him responsible for forging links with sovereign citizen movements around the world, including in the UK, New Zealand and Hawaii.
The supreme council declared it was taking over authority of the government in 2022 but it was last year that its “paper war” began in earnest. Confused civil servants and court officials began receiving a deluge of documents adorned with the ornate wax seals of the IRB. These letters made grand claims such as the abolition of the Act of Union, the Ministers and Secretaries Act and the Unlawful Organisation (Suppression) Order, 1939, which outlawed the IRA.
Also repealed, according to the IRB, was Laudabiliter, a papal bull said to have been issued by Pope Adrian IV in 1155 permitting the Norman invasion of Ireland.
The documents use the impenetrable language of the sovereign citizen movement, making it hard to determine what they actually mean. Civil servants, unsure of how to respond to these declarations, generally just ignored them. This allowed the IRB to claim their declarations had been uncontested by the “corporate government”.
The group also went about setting up a network of “co-ops” and councils around the country, which would become their version of local government. The first was established in Finglas, Dublin. The IRB claims it has established more than 30 bodies in seven counties, with particularly strong representation in Donegal and Galway.
Documents were then issued to the genuine local councils, informing them that all decisions must first be referred to their IRB counterparts.
Co-op members also started recruiting in their local areas. They claimed significant success. Flanagan told one meeting that 150 people had been recruited to the Crossmolina co-op in Co Mayo. Another member claimed to have recruited 297 people by canvassing just two housing estates in Finglas.
Efforts began to set up a network of community and county courts around the country, with locals being asked to take up the role of judges. The extent of this network is not clear, although Flanagan claims one case was held before a jury in Kilfenora, Co Clare, in 2022 which resulted in the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 being struck down.
In response to queries, the Department of Justice warned that any summons issued by these IRB courts “are invalid and without lawful authority”.
Most of the IRB’s activity has gone unnoticed or has been ignored by officials. Several local authorities responded to queries that they have never heard of the IRB. However, in Galway, two meetings of the Oughterard co-op were attended by Independent Ireland councillor Noel Thomas, according to minutes of the meetings.
Thomas was a Fianna Fáil councillor until 2024 when he resigned after facing disciplinary action for saying the “inn is full” in reference to immigration. He made the comments in the context of an arson attack on a hotel earmarked for asylum seekers. Thomas’s home was searched by gardaí investigating the arson but he was never accused of an offence.
According to the minutes from an IRB co-op meeting in June, Thomas “delivered a passionate speech highlighting the illusion of democracy” and expressed support for the co-ops “as real democratic alternatives”.
He confirmed this week he attended the meetings. He said he knew little about the IRB but described the concept of the co-op as “wonderful”.
Other councillors in Galway began expressing concern these groups may be misleading locals into believing they are legitimate public representatives. According to a report in July in the Connacht Tribune, Independent councillor Thomas Welby said the IRB was “peddling mistruths” and that “there were young people going around Oughterard wrongly claiming people don’t have to pay their car tax or insurance”.
A spokeswoman for Galway County Council said it was aware of these councils and that at a meeting in June, “elected members expressed concern regarding the potential confusion these groups may cause to the public by presenting themselves as representative bodies.
“The council wishes to reaffirm that it is the only democratically elected local authority for Co Galway, with statutory responsibilities and accountability to the public.”
Mary Hanna Hourigan, president of the Association of Irish Local Government, says her organisation is aware “of groups purporting to set up so-called “community councils” or “co-ops” in a number of counties.
“We have very serious concerns about any group which seeks to position itself as a substitute for local government or the courts system without any democratic mandate, legal standing or accountability,” says Hourigan, a Fine Gael councillor in Tipperary. “Such actions risk misleading or exploiting citizens and undermining confidence in the institutions of the State.”
She urged the public to be cautious about engaging with groups that claim to be representative bodies “without any basis in law or legitimacy through the democratic process.”
Travel licences
The IRB has also been active in setting up its own versions of more mundane State functions. For example, members can now apply for an IRB-issued “travel card”, its version of a driving licence.
In August 2023 Flanagan produced one of these cards when he was pulled over by gardaí while driving his 2022 BMW X5 at 155km per hour on the motorway. After learning the car had never been taxed, gardaí seized the BMW, leading Flanagan to lodge a case in the High Court.
He employed various sovereign-citizen legal devices, telling the court he was not a person under the law but a “sovereign living man, ever present from fertilisation until last breath”.
The judge found against Flanagan, accusing him of employing a “a pseudo-legal nonsense without any effect and done for reasons which are at best confused and at worst malign”.
Recently, much of the IRB’s efforts have gone into setting up its own property registration service. According to its website, users pay €25 a year to register a profile and another €500 to “proclaim equitable, beneficial and allodial interests in land and dwellings”.
Hughes, the secretary for foreign affairs, has said publicly that the IRB has also hired Flanagan’s company TMHL Consultancy “for administration services” and to run the property registration site. He said profits “go towards further employment and the advancement of these services”.
The group has faced criticism for its approach towards finances. Last year, during an appearance on an Irish far-right podcast, Flanagan faced questions over why the IRB was charging €22 a head for “deeds of acknowledgment and confirmation”. Flanagan said the charge was to “cover costs”.
Flanagan denied that the IRB local councils and co-ops were trying to replace the legitimate councils. Instead they were there ‘to assist public representatives’
Flanagan agreed to an interview but said he was unavailable this week. Instead he responded to a list of questions from The Irish Times. He said the current IRB was the continuation of the historic organisation after “a faction” continued on its operations in 1924.
He confirmed the IRB claims “authority” for the people of Ireland. That authority had been transferred to Dáil Éireann in 1919 but reverted back to the IRB following a decision of its “supreme council” in 2022, he said.
Regarding its court system, he said it was expected that every county would have its own court by 2030. The decisions of these courts would be referred to An Garda Síochána for enforcement, he said.
Flanagan denied that the IRB local councils and co-ops were trying to replace the legitimate councils. Instead they were there “to assist public representatives”, he said.
He said there were 2,000-3,000 people involved in the IRB’s local councils. He said more than 1,000 had signed up for the property registration service and more than 1,500 had sought IRB deeds of citizenship. These figures could not be independently confirmed.
The IRB also did not claim to control the “corporate” Defence Forces, Flanagan said. Rather, it was referring to the version of Óglaigh na hÉireann established in 1913.
Regarding fees, Flanagan said TMHL did not receive any income from the IRB and that earlier this month a decision was taken to replace the €500 property registration fee with an optional donation to “a community of their choice”.
The tactics of the IRB mirror those of the provisional government during the War of Independence, when it established its own institutions and courts to undermine those of the British crown. However, unlike the insurgents, the modern IRB enjoys no electoral mandate or broad support. With its ill-defined ideology and bizarre legal theories, that position seems unlikely to change significantly in the near future.
As the core group grows ... the likelihood of violence becomes greater
— Dr Kevin Sweeney, UCC
So, given that its main political achievement to date is annoying civil servants, why should anyone be concerned?
According to Dr Kevin Sweeney, a criminologist in UCC who studies the effects of disinformation on democratic institutions, the danger is that groups like the IRB can slowly erode trust in State institutions.
The organs of the State only work because people believe and agree they are legitimate, says Sweeney, who spent 27 years as a garda, including in the Special Detective Unit. Once that agreement is withdrawn, things fall apart.
Sovereign citizen movements offer easy answers to complex questions, he says, and it is often vulnerable people who suffer. Such groups first became popular in the United States where they evolved from pro-gun and anti-tax militia movements, he says.
Their basic tenets include that citizens do not have to pay taxes or appear in court unless they have entered a “contract” to do so and that government authority “is defective or limited,” states Sweeney. Adherents often employ these “pseudo-laws” to claim they do not have to repay debts or obey road traffic laws.
These types of arguments have been repeatedly and emphatically rejected in the Irish courts, yet people continue to rely on them, sometimes resulting in large legal bills or even jail terms for contempt. “When these false beliefs hit reality, it’s never a pretty sight,” says Sweeney.
Most sovereign citizens are not violent, he says, and there is no evidence the IRB has violent intentions.
Flanagan says violence is “repugnant” to the group’s objectives.
However, in other countries sovereign citizen movements have been responsible for attacks on government institutions and the murder of police officers.
Last year, nine members of the Reichsbürger movement, a German sovereign citizen group, went on trial accused of attempting to orchestrate a coup against the Berlin government.
“Only a tiny per cent of those with radical views become extremists and take radical action,” Sweeney says, “But as the core group grows ... the likelihood of violence becomes greater.
“Once you accept the conspiracy theory worldview is correct, you’re a very short distance away from taking active measures,” he says.
