Patrick Shea (civil servant)
Patrick Shea CB, OBE, FRSA (27 April 1908 – 31 May 1986) was a Northern Irish civil servant and the first Roman Catholic since A. N. Bonaparte-Wyse in the 1920s to achieve the rank of permanent secretary of a government department in Northern Ireland. Career Shea was born in Delvin, County Westmeath, where his father, a native Irish speaker from West Kerry, was a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Shea grew up in various locations around the country to which his father was posted. One of his earliest memories was being taken by his father to watch the celebrations in the Phoenix Park, Dublin that followed the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912. This would have established a devolved parliament in Dublin after it had completed its passage through the House of Lords which it was due to do by 1914. However, the outbreak of World War I caused Home Rule to be suspended for the war's duration, and following the Easter Rising of 1916, the subsequent success of Sinn Fein at the 1918 General Election and its establishment of a provisional government in Dublin in 1919 the Bill was never put into effect. During the