Why Brendan J O’Dowd is on this page

Brendan J O’Dowd, born in 1965 and raised near Culleens in Kilglass — the heartland of the Slíocht Buí branch — was inaugurated as the fifth modern Taoiseach at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Enniscrone in October 2012. He is the first Irish-born Taoiseach of Tireragh since Tadhg Buidhe in 1595.

His three-year term, based in Castlebar, grounded the modern chieftainship firmly in its homeland. The 2012 programme opened with a visit to Rathcroghan in Co. Roscommon, where the stone marker for Daithí — the last pagan Ard Rí and ancestor of the Ó Dubhda — still stands over the ring-forts, returning the clan’s attention to the pre-Christian roots of its line.

See The Taoisigh of Tireragh for the full line of modern chieftains.

Heritage notes

Family root: Tireragh.

The directory threads Brendan J O’Dowd back to the Ó Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.