Denis McCullough - Business and Later Political Career

Business and Later Political Career

McCullough's political activity went alongside maintaining and developing an instrument making and retail music business in Belfast’s Howard Street, generated from his original trade as a piano tuner. F.J. Biggar, the solicitor antiquarian and friend of Roger Casement, encouraged its growth with orders for bagpipes for his boy bands. In time, after he moved to Dublin, this became McCullough Pigott of Suffolk Street and marked the beginning of a highly successful and influential Free State business career.

McCullough distinguished himself (inspired by Michael Collins) in forming the New Ireland Assurance Company. A director of Clondalkin Paper Mills, he also had a role in the Irish Army School of Music, and the Gate Theatre. While in America as Special Commissioner for the Free State (leaving his wife in charge of the music business) his new premises in Dawson Street were entirely destroyed by an Anti-Treaty IRA land mine as a reprisal, during the Irish Civil War.

He was an unsuccessful Sinn Féin candidate at the 1918 general election for the Tyrone South constituency. On 20 November 1924, McCullough stood as the Cumann na nGaedheal candidate at a by-election in the Donegal constituency, following the resignation of Cumann na nGaedheal TD Peter Ward. He was elected to the 4th Dáil Éireann, but did not stand again at the next general election, held in June 1927.