15 Facts About Eamon Broy

Eamon "Ned" Broy was successively a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the Irish Republican Army, the National Army, and the Garda Siochana of the Irish Free State.

Eamon Broy served as Commissioner of the Gardai from February 1933 to June 1938.

Eamon Broy later served as president of the Olympic Council of Ireland for fifteen years.

Eamon Broy was a double agent within the DMP, with the rank of Detective Sergeant.

Eamon Broy worked as a clerk inside G Division, the intelligence branch of the DMP.

On 7 April 1919, Eamon Broy smuggled Collins into G Division's archives in Great Brunswick Street, enabling him to identify "G-Men", six of whom would be killed by the IRA.

Eamon Broy supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the National Army during the Irish Civil War, reaching the rank of colonel.

In 1934 Eamon Broy oversaw the creation of "The Auxiliary Special Branch" of the Garda, formed mainly of hastily-trained anti-Treaty IRA veterans, who would have been opponents of Eamon Broy in the civil war.

The "Eamon Broy Harriers" nickname persisted into the 1940s, even though Eamon Broy himself was no longer in command, and for the bodies targeted by the unit was a highly-abusive term, still applied by radical Irish republicans to the Garda Special Branch.

Eamon Broy was President of the Olympic Council of Ireland from 1935 to 1950.

Eamon Broy was a member of the Standing Committee of the Irish Amateur Handball Association.

Eamon Broy died on 22 January 1972 at his residence in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar.

On 17 September 2016, a memorial to Eamon Broy was unveiled in Coolegagen Cemetery, County Offaly, close to his childhood home.

Neil Jordan's film Michael Collins inaccurately depicts Eamon Broy as having been arrested, tortured and killed by SIS agents.

Eamon Broy is mentioned and makes an appearance in Michael Russell's detective novel The City of Shadows, set partly in Dublin in the 1930s, published by HarperCollins in 2012.