James Ryan

James Ryan (6 December 1892 – 25 September 1970) was an Irish politician who served in every Fianna Fáil government from 1932 to 1965, successively as Minister for Agriculture (1932–1947), Health and Social Welfare (1947–1948 and 1951–1954), and Finance (1957–1965). He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Wexford from 1918 to 1922 and 1923 to 1965, and as senator from 1965 to 1969. He was a member of Sinn Féin until he joined Fianna Fáil upon that party's foundation in 1926. Early and private life Ryan was born on the family farm at Tomcoole, near Taghmon, County Wexford, in 1892. The second-youngest of twelve children, he was educated at St Peter's College, Wexford, and Ring College, Waterford. In 1911, he won a county council scholarship to University College Dublin where he studied medicine. He passed his final medical exam in March 1917 and subsequently opened a medical practice in Wexford. Four years later, in 1921, Ryan moved to Dublin where he opened a practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He left medicine in 1925, after he bought Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. Ryan lived there and it remained a working farm until his death. In July 1919, Ryan married Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, had also fought in the Easter Rising and was subsequently an author of children's stories in Irish. They had three children together. One of Ryan's sisters, Mary Kate, married Seán T. O'Kelly, one of Ryan's future cabinet colleagues and a future President of Ireland. Following her death O'Kelly married her sister, Phyllis Ryan. Another of Ryan's sisters, Josephine ('Min') Ryan, married Richard Mulcahy, a future leader of Fine Gael. Another sister, Agnes, married Denis McCullough, a Cumann na nGaedheal TD from 1924 to 1927. He is also the great-grandfather of Ireland and Leinster Rugby player James Ryan