union

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Peter Ennis, top row, stands head and shoulders above this gathering of returned prisoners outside Liberty Hall in 1917.

Suck Diesel I am impressed! Please tell more.

A couple of date clues. Restoration was well underway by May 1917.
Evening Herald (Dublin) - Thursday 21 June 1917

The building has been recently undergoing structural alterations, owing to the damage done during the Rebellion, and is now practically restored to its original condition.

Freeman's Journal - Friday 11 May 1917

Republican flags were flown from the scaffolding around Liberty Hall.

and
Labour Leader - Thursday 25 January 1917

We gathered in a bullet scarred and windowless wing of Liberty Hall, and discussed the prospects of a branch.

“Liberty Hall’s courageous caretaker”

“YOU are quite at liberty…” With these words, caretaker Peter Ennis greeted the early morning raiding party at Liberty Hall on Friday 22nd August 1919.

On the Wednesday prior to the raid, Christopher Quigley, a news vendor, had induced Private S Morrison, of the 3rd Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, to procure a rifle for sale. A deal was struck for £2 and the rifle was passed through a window at the Hall. Quigley’s and Morrison’s subsequent arrests led to the raid.
A detailed account of the 4am raid and Ennis’ trial is documented in the British National Archives at Kew.
Having greeted the raiding party with the words, “You are quite at liberty”, Ennis continued his good humoured banter by asking, “Are you going to pay me overtime for this, sir?” The search uncovered firearms and Ennis, as the only resident, was arrested.
He was registered as prisoner 499 at Mountjoy Prison, where he was also listed as a ‘hunger striker’. An approval by the Chief Secretary of Ireland allowed Ennis to sign union papers while at Mountjoy.
Ennis’ court martial took place on 24th September 1919. He was successfully defended by the eminent republican barrister Patrick Lynch KC, who would later serve as Attorney General. Ennis co-accused Quigley, on the other hand, was sentenced to a year in prison.
In what seemingly was a reprisal for his acquittal, late one evening the Black and Tans ‘lifted’ Ennis from the Hall, brought him to the Custom House railings and beat him mercilessly on the head with revolvers.
Years later, Ennis’ obituary stated that he had “given himself up for dead” at the time. Suffering terribly, he dragged himself back over the cobbles at Beresford Place to the Hall and was able to close the door. According to the obituary, he then “swooned from loss of blood and lay almost unconscious until discovered the next morning”.
His obituary recalled that this was one of “many occasions” that Ennis had “exciting and almost fatal encounters with the armed forces of Dublin Castle”. During the Easter Rising, and under James Connolly’s orders to leave “as the union needed him”, he had staged a dramatic escape from the GPO under machine gun fire to return to Liberty Hall.”

For more, see

siptu.medium.com/liberty-halls-courageous-caretaker-1b5b4...

Image used on front cover of ‘The Impact Of The 1916 Rising: among the nations edited by Ruán O'Donnell, Irish Academic Press, ISBN 978 0 7165 2965’

archive.irishdemocrat.co.uk/book-reviews/impact-of-1916/