Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Máire Mhac an tSaoi is an Irish language scholar and academic.

She was born Máire MacEntee (on 4 April, 1922), the daughter of the former Belfast IRA leader, Seán MacEntee, who would become a Fianna Fáil TD, and Tánaiste in the Irish parliament. Both Seán MacEntee, and his wife, Limerick-born Margaret Browne, were dedicated Irish republicans. Her uncle, Monsignor Pádraig de Brún, was one of the most respected scholars of the Irish language in the twentieth century.

Máire inherited her parents' political views. These evolved over the years, in particular due to the influence of her politically iconoclastic and non-religious husband, Conor Cruise O'Brien, five years her senior, who had been married previously, to a Protestant, with whom he had had three children already. Nonetheless, Mhac an tSaoi married him in a Catholic ceremony, and they went on to adopt two children.

Mhac an tSaoi has had a lifelong passion for the Irish language and she is today one of the leading authorities on Munster Irish. She is a prolific writer in Irish. As a member of Aosdána she became a key opponent of the Catholic convert and nationalist Francis Stuart, a one-time son-in-law of Maud Gonne, for his perceived anti-Semitism.

She has described herself as "a nationalist, a republican and a pacifist".