MacAvin (McAvin), John Patrick (1880–1938), businessman and politician, was born on 27 December 1880 in Ballymore, Co. Westmeath, the eldest son of David MacAvin, an RIC constable stationed in the Ballymore area and originally of Co. Monaghan, and his wife Anne (née Walsh) from Co. Galway. He grew up in Oughterard, Co. Galway, presumably because his father was transferred there. The family was well off and he was educated at Mungret College, Co. Limerick, and Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary.
Perhaps influenced by his pious mother, in 1901 he was studying for the catholic priesthood in Clonliffe college, Drumcondra, Dublin. Deciding against the religious life, he began working in Dublin around 1903, living with his mother and younger siblings at St Columba's Road Upper, Drumcondra. Latterly, his father lived apart from the family and farmed in Monaghan, having retired from the RIC.
By 1911 John was a commercial traveller in the tea and wine business. He began working as a commercial agent, operating from an office in College Green. For many years he served as Dublin agent to Messrs M. Kosmack, flour millers, of Glasgow, and latterly acted on behalf of Messrs W. and D. J. Wilson, flour and rice millers, of Liverpool. He was appointed (c.1913) secretary of the Dublin Master Bakers' Association just as the bakery workers were organising themselves into a united union and shortly before the outbreak of war led to shortages, rising prices and accusations of profiteering. MacAvin's tact and judgement prevented any serious labour disputes and won the confidence of the master bakers and the union leaders.
Running for the nationalist party, he was elected a guardian of the North Dublin Union in 1914, topping the poll in the Drumcondra ward. A year later he again polled impressively in securing a seat on Dublin Corporation. Further to his nationalist party affiliation, he was also sponsored by the Dublin Citizens' Association, a civic group dominated by catholic and protestant businessmen who made common cause over keeping rates down. Accordingly, he assiduously promoted the economising measures desired by his backers.
His role as a representative of powerful business interests was further demonstrated by his appointment in 1916 as secretary of the Irish Cattle Traders' Association (and his subsequent appointment in 1922 as secretary of the newly formed Irish Cattle Exporters' Association). He energetically and skilfully promoted his clients' case amid wartime regulations of the cattle trade. In 1917, he married Mollie Callaghan, daughter of Frank Callaghan, proprietor of a thriving saddler firm on Dame Street. They lived initially in Glasnevin.
The nationalist party's position faltered following the 1916 rising and subsequent surge in support for Sinn Féin. In 1917 MacAvin seconded the successful nomination to the mayoralty of independent nationalist Laurence O'Neill (qv) who acted as honest broker between the nationalist and Sinn Féin parties. After the nationalist party was routed by Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election, its members on Dublin Corporation anticipated their own electoral oblivion and either stopped attending meetings or (in MacAvin's case) deferred to Sinn Féin. He was elected high sheriff of Dublin for 1919 seemingly because he was acceptable both to Sinn Féin and the government. His term of office coincided with the first year of the Irish war of independence during which he avoided controversy, doing little to hinder the IRA's prosecution of a guerrilla war. Indeed, his mother harboured IRA men and was a lifelong friend to the veteran Fenian Dr Mark Ryan (qv).
When the long-delayed Dublin Corporation elections were held in early 1920, he stood, like many former members of the moribund nationalist party, as an independent, but to the surprise of many observers lost his seat as Sinn Féin swept all before it. The Sinn Féin-controlled Dublin Corporation declined to elect a new high sheriff and, concerned that the authorities might seize the chain of office, enjoined MacAvin to retain it for safekeeping. Ignoring threats of legal action, he did so for four years before returning the chain to the corporation in 1924 when the political situation had become more settled.
During his time on Dublin Corporation he had grown close to the leader of the Sinn Féin grouping there, William T. Cosgrave (qv). In his other capacity as minister for local government for the underground Dáil Éireann government, Cosgrave recognised that the revolutionary movement needed men with MacAvin's administrative and business expertise. After Cosgrave's department assumed control of the apparatus of local government throughout most of Ireland in summer 1920, MacAvin began serving as a Dáil Éireann justice in north county Dublin. Impressive in that role, he was sent to Limerick to resolve a serious industrial dispute, and after doing so was made an official arbitrator of the Dáil Éireann Department of Local Government, going on to settle a number of other labour disputes.
These services ensured that he continued to perform as an effective lobbyist for his commercial patrons following Irish independence in 1922. As secretary of the Cattle Traders' Association, he grappled with a series of embargoes placed on Irish cattle entering Britain arising from recurrent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease during 1917–24. Protesting that these embargoes were politically motivated, in 1922–3 he led deputations to London and refuted allegations in the British press that infected cattle were deliberately being shipped from Ireland to England. His representations persuaded the Irish government to pass legislation in 1928 compensating Irish shippers whose cattle had been slaughtered in British ports and establishing a compensation fund for future such occurrences.
The cattle traders' other main grievances related to the high cost of freight and shipping, and the unsatisfactory nature of transit conditions for livestock. In particular, the advent of a shipping cartel on the Irish Sea put cattle exporters at a disadvantage. In 1921 MacAvin had assisted a number of leading Dublin cattle traders in setting up the Dublin and Lancashire Company, which acquired two steamships to ply between Dublin and Preston; he also served as company secretary. However, rival shipping interests exercised a dominant influence over the Dublin Port and Docks Board and ensured that the Dublin and Lancashire Company was denied adequate berthing facilities. As a result the company suffered losses and was bought out by the British and Irish Steamship Company in 1922; MacAvin subsequently joined that company's board.
During a lengthy dockworkers strike in 1922–3, he persuaded the four cattle traders' organisations in Ireland to cooperate. After lengthy negotiations, in 1925 he oversaw the formation of a national executive of the cattle traders' organisations, to which he was secretary, enabling them to present a united front against the shippers. In 1927 he was co-opted a member of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, and used this position to agitate for the provision of lairage accommodation in the port.
A long-standing business associate of the Dublin bookmaker Richard Duggan (qv) (the two men organised a donkey derby in Shelbourne Park in 1920), he assisted Duggan in setting up the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake in 1930, thereafter continuing to be involved in its administration and later serving as a director of the Irish Hospitals Trust. He was a small shareholder in the venture, and in 1973 his widow held 300 shares out of 2.1 million, enough to provide a useful income given the stupendous profits realised by the sweepstakes. The MacAvins' original stake may have been larger. From 1934 he was managing director of the Spa and Hydro Hotel in Lucan, Co. Dublin, which was owned by Duggan and Joseph McGrath (qv), another Irish Sweepstake principal. His responsibilities with the Spa and Hydro and the Irish Hospitals Trust obliged him to resign from the Dublin Port and Docks Board and as secretary of the Dublin Master Bakers' Association in the mid 1930s.
He was president of the Rockwell College Union for 1933/4 and active in the Society of St Vincent de Paul. Mentioned in 1929 as a possible Cumann na nGaedheal candidate in a dáil by-election, he intended running for Dublin Corporation as an independent in the 1930 local elections, but withdrew at the last minute.
He died suddenly in his residence at Charleville Road, Phibsborough, Dublin, on 20 December 1938 and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. His funeral was one of the largest seen in Dublin for some years, attracting notables spanning the political and commercial spectrum. He left an estate worth £9,857. With his wife he had three sons and three daughters. His daughter Josie McAvin (qv) enjoyed a distinguished and lengthy career as a set decorator and art director for film and television, winning an Oscar (for Out of Africa) and an Emmy.