Conláed (Conleth) (d. 516/20), grandson of Eimire, was first bishop of Kildare. According to the Life of St Brigit (qv) by Cogitosus (qv) he was a hermit living in dextra Liffei Campi (probably Oldconnell near Newbridge, Co. Kildare), who was invited by Brigit to become bishop of her double monastery at Kildare – which included monks, priests, and nuns – to govern it jointly with her. He and his successors allegedly became archbishops and primates of all the bishops of Ireland and of the churches within Kildare's paruchia. In the genealogies of the saints of Ireland, he is given as Conláed cráibdech cerd (Conláed the pious, a metal-worker), the son of Cormac, and a member of the Dál Messin Corb (west Wicklow), the same dynastic group as Cóemgen (qv).
A gloss in the Martyrology of Óengus (qv) (fl. c.830) says that Conláed was devoured by wolves as he set out against Brigit's wishes on pilgrimage to Rome to buy vestments and altar-plate to replace that sold by her for money for the poor – thus fulfilling Brigit's prophecy ‘You shall not arrive [at Rome] and you shall not return.’ This story may have been an attempt at an etymology of his name: coin, ‘to wolves’; leth, ‘half’. A note in the Book of Leinster associates Conláed with Dinn Flatha, which is located in the area of Tara Hill (near Gorey, Co. Wexford). Other sources describe him as a member of the Uí Náir, a sub-sept of the Dál Messin Corb of north Leinster.
Conláed died in 516 (Ann. Inisf.) or 520 (Mart. Tall.), but the date is uncertain. His remains were buried at Killeen Cormac, but were enshrined beside those of Brigit in a sarcophagus in Kildare church at the end of the eighth century, as recorded in an entry in the Annals of Ulster for 799: ‘The placing of the relics of Conláed in a shrine of gold and silver’.