Eamon Bulfin

Eamon Bulfin was born in Argentina in 1892, the son of William Bulfin of Birr, Co. Offaly, and Ann O'Rourke of Ballymore, Co. Westmeath. The family moved to Ireland in 1902, and he was a pupil at Patrick Pearse's St Enda's. Offaly Archives record that he joined the IRB in 1913, and SILAS that he captained UCD to a hurling title in 1915.

In Easter Week 1916, at James Connolly's request, he raised the flags over the GPO. Dublin City Council's Richmond Barracks describes the flag he hoisted as green with "Irish Republic" in white letters, one of two flags over the building on 24 April. He was condemned to death and reprieved. Sources differ on why: a Department of Foreign Affairs page said it was because he was born in Argentina, while Edmundo Murray of SILAS says the Argentine envoy intervened after his court-martial. He was interned at Frongoch and deported on 21 March 1917 under the Aliens Restriction Act. In Argentina he was convicted of evading military service and freed in 1919.

In 1919 de Valera named him the Irish Republic's first representative to Argentina. A de Valera letter of 6 May 1919 set his aims: build direct trade, co-ordinate Irish opinion in Argentina and align it with the demand for a republic. He launched an Irish Fund, and Murray says he also negotiated arms shipments for the IRA, a claim the research has found in no other source. A Dáil report of 10 August 1921 recorded him as the Republic's representative in Buenos Aires, planning a Republican Bulletin and concerned that a split in the local community about ten years earlier was limiting its influence. In 1920 Offaly's county council elected him chairman in his absence.

He returned to Ireland in the early 1920s, in 1922 according to Murray or 1923 according to Offaly Archives, and died in 1968. Bulfin Road in Inchicore, Dublin, is named after him. His sister Catalina married Seán MacBride.