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The Committee had been established during World War I to support Belgian refugees with accommodation and financial assistance after the German invasion into Belgium.

The Birr War Pensions Committee was established under the national Naval and War Pensions Committee.

Séamus O’ Brennan was born James Michael Brennan in Daingean, Co. Offaly c. 1886. He was educated in Daingean NS and the old CBS Tullamore. He worked in the GPO from 1903 and soon after joined the Keating branch of the Gaelic League and the Geraldine Football Club with two others, but after six months’ probation all three lost their jobs, obviously for their patriotic tendencies. He returned to Tullamore where he worked as a clerk in P. & H. Egan’s. He helped form the Tullamore Pipers’ Band in 1911 and was a key member of the Tullamore Volunteers in 1914. He went on the run with Peadar Bracken following the shooting of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Sergeant Ahearn who had attempted to disarm them on 20 March 1916 (the Tullamore Incident). In his military pension application, Brennan states that on Good Friday he was sent by PH Pearse to Tullamore. Following the Easter Rising he was interned until June 1916. He joined F Company, First Battalion, Irish Volunteers upon reorganisation. During the War of Independence he acquired a number of arms for the IRA before being arrested again in November 1920 and interned in Ballykinlar until December 1921. In 1922 he married Miss May Margaret Doody, daughter of James T. Doody, Tullamore. He was a personal friend of de Valera since the 1917 Ennis election and for a time served him as a bodyguard. President de Valera and old comrades were among those who attended the funeral in 1968.

Peadar Bracken was born in Tullamore in 1887. A lifelong nationalist, he joined the Tullamore branch of the Gaelic League in 1902 and was recruited into the IRB in 1904 at the age of 17. A stone-cutter by trade, he emigrated in 1911 to Perth in Western Australia where he joined his brother Denis in the stone-cutting business there. On hearing of the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, Peadar returned to Tullamore and was elected by the Tullamore Volunteers as their First Captain. In November 1914, he was arrested along with 45 others for his involvement in the Geashill Cattle Drive. Due to the fact that he had discharged a fireream during the melée, he was sentenced to six months imprisonment in Mountjoy Gaol but only served two.

In 1915 he was appointed First Commandant of the newly formed Athlone IV Brigade. In March 1916, he was a key figure in the Tullamore Incident and fired ‘the first shots’ in the affray. He and Seamus O’Brennan subsequently went on the run. During the 1916 Rising, he held key positions in the heart of the fighting, as OC O’Connell Bridge and holding the GPO until surrender. He was released from Kilmainham Gaol in June 1916 and immediately reorganised the Athlone IV Brigade. During the War of Independence he was appointed overall Commandant of No 1 and No 2 Offaly IRA Brigades and Staff Officer to IRA-HQ. He was interned in the Curragh Camp in 1921 but was released in October of that year. Following the establishment of the Free State, he was appointed first clerk of the courts for Tullamore and later to Daingean, Clara and Ferbane. In 1934 he was appointed commissioner for oaths and in the 1940s he served as staff officer with the Tullamore Local Defence Force. His military pension application was approved in 1940 and he was awarded medals for his involvement in the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. He died in January 1916.

Maura O'Brennan, of Cormac Street, Tullamore, spent her early years in Wexford. She came to Tullamore in the early 1920s and was a member of the teaching staff of the convent national school, and except for a brief period in Mucklagh spent all of her teaching career in Tullamore. She married Alyosius O'Brennan in {??]. She was a founding member of Tullamore Guild ICA, and appeared as a guest of honour at the ICA 25th anniversary party in the Bridge House in May 1984. She died in July of that year, aged 79.

Kenneth Arthur Kennedy was the youngest son of Doctor J. M. Prior Kennedy, JP, of Elmfield, Tullamore King’s County, and Anchoretta H. Jacob. He was born on 3 April 1894 and was educated at St Columba’s College and Trinity College. K. A. Kennedy was called to the bar in 1917 and qualified as a solicitor in 1924. He was a solicitor with A & L Goodbody with offices at Dame Street, Dublin, Moate and Tullamore becoming a partner by 1930. Alfred Goodbody had died in 1924 in the same year as Kenneth Kennedy qualified. In 1930 Kenneth Kennedy, Lewis Goodbody and George Acheson Overend acquired the fee simple as joint tenants of premises at High Street, Tullamore held on lease since 1913. Lewis Goodbody died in 1933 and the ownership of the firm was shared between G. O. Overend and Kenneth Arthur Kennedy, but not necessarily in equal shares. In 1947 a new partnership arrangement was entered into between Overend and Kennedy and the following year Kenneth Arthur Kennedy acquired the entire interest in the building at High Street for £800. The A & L Goodbody, Tullamore partnership appears at this time to have comprised of G. A. Overend, Kenneth A. Kennedy and G. G. Overend. The Tullamore building was to serve the Tullamore firm now known as Goodbody & Kennedy until 1989 when the business was sold to Dermot Scanlon by Kenneth C. P. Kennedy. He had been active in the firm up to his death on 9 December 1974 at the age of 80 and had served his clients in Tullamore for fifty years. He married Mary Lawrence in 1924, the same year as he qualified as a solicitor. She was better known locally as Bean Uí Chinnéide and was a keen landscape painter and with her husband a lover of nature. Mr Kennedy’s tombstone at Clonminch fittingly records – /He loved his birds/ and he loved his bible/The word of God/ a Lantern to his feet/. Court tributes were paid to Mr Kennedy by District Justice Tormey at Tullamore district court and on behalf of the solicitors by Mr Eugene Hunt.

Architect to Lord Digby, Geashill Estate, Co. Offaly and winner in 1868 of best design for labourers' cottages in competition run by the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland.

Edward Henry Kenelm Digby, 12th Baron Digby was born 24 July 1924. He is a British peer, and retired British Army (Coldstream Guards). He is the son of Edward Kenelm Digby, 11th Baron Digby of Geashill and Hon. Constance Pamela Alice Bruce. He was educated at Eton College, Windsor, Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford University. He also studied at Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Berkshire. He fought in the Second World War and in the Malayan Emergency between 1948 and 1950. He was Aide-de-Camp to the Commander-in-Chief, Far East Land Forces between 1950 and 1951 and Aide-de-Camp to the Commander-in-Chief, British Army of the Rhine between 1951 and 1952. He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset between 1957 and 1965. He held the office of Justice of the Peace for Dorset in 1959. He succeeded to the titles of 12th Baron Digby of Geashill, King's County, and 6th Baron Digby of Sherborne on 29 January 1964. He was invested as a Knight, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (K.St.J.) in 1985. He was invested as a Knight Commander, Royal Victorian Order (K.C.V.O.) in 1998. He married Dione Marian Sherbrooke, daughter of Rear-Admiral Robert St. Vincent Sherbrooke, V.C. and Rosemary Neville Buckley, on 18 December 1952, with whom he had three children. He died on 1 April 2018.