Laurence Ginnell

Laurence Ginnell was born in 1852 at Delvin, Co. Westmeath. In 1921 de Valera sent him as the Dáil's special envoy to South America, with Argentina as his focus. He and his wife Alice arrived in Buenos Aires on 25 July 1921 aboard the SS Martha Washington, according to the Westmeath Examiner; the ABEI Journal dates the arrival to the end of July. A Dáil foreign affairs report of 10 August 1921 named him as special envoy to Argentina and the other South American republics and noted that he had attended Peru's independence Te Deum by official invitation.

J. D. Rodríguez, in the ABEI Journal, gives his aims as raising money, stepping up propaganda and extending the diplomatic network in Latin America. The major Buenos Aires papers treated his arrival as minor news; The Southern Cross was the exception, and provincial papers in Entre Ríos and Santa Fe covered the mission. P.J. Little's report of October 1921 said Ginnell was well received by wealthy supporters and invited to functions normally reserved for officials. He launched a loan aimed at £500,000, of which Little expected only £10,000 to £15,000, partly because of a slump in the cattle market. President Yrigoyen's government was friendly but would not recognise the Republic.

The Argentine foreign ministry's 2017 exhibition catalogue shows him with the Irish community and Fr Seehy in Venado Tuerto in 1921 and at St Patrick's Day events there in 1922. The Westmeath Examiner says the couple worked until April 1922 and that the mission foundered after the Treaty of December 1921. He died in 1923, a date the research has not yet verified against a primary source.