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The Irish
In General
- The Irish Mob: Subverted; they're not really an organized grouping, and many weren't part of any formal gang on the outside. The closest thing we get are Cyril and Ryan, who led their own Irish gang before coming to Oz.
- Mauve Shirt: Every member of the Irish whose surname isn't O'Reily. Timmy Kirk is a subversion. As a member of the Irish, he is definitely a minor character, but when he joins The Christians, he becomes a significant character.
- Oire Land: Padraig Connolly, the rest of the Irish have more of a Southies style to them.
- The Troubles: Again, Padraig Connolly.
- White Gangbangers
Cyril O'Reily
Cyril O'Reily
Played By: Scott William Winters
Prisoner #98P284. Convicted July 1, 1998 - Murder in the first degree. Sentence: Life imprisonment, up for parole in 60 years. Convicted in 2002 of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death.
Ryan O'Reily's mentally-handicapped younger brother, who suffered a head injury protecting Ryan and now requires constant supervision. An honest and good-hearted person, he is prone to outbursts of complete rage and is easy to fool — a bad combo in a place like Oz, which is full of Manipulative Bastard types.
- Anti-Villain: Cyril is good-natured and generally well-meaning, but his poor impulse control and gullibility mean that he's easily roused into violence.
- The Atoner: He deeply regrets killing Preston Nathan and Hamid Khan, and earnestly apologizes to the former's parents when they confront him.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He's endearingly innocent most of the time. But when he goes off, its best to be somewhere else.
- Butt-Monkey: Cyril gets it bad. Being Ryan O'Reily's brother and being rather soft in the head makes him a huge target.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's VERY good at boxing.
- Dumb Is Good: Before the brain damage, he was no better than Ryan in the morals department. Afterwards, he's good-natured to a fault.
- Dumb Muscle: Mentally handicapped and one of the strongest prisoners in Oz.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: He's convinced that Ryan, for all his flaws, is an inherently good person.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Thanks to the brain damage, he has very poor impulse control. His response to distress is almost always to beat the hell out of the offender.
- Hidden Depths: While Cyril is generally unable to understand the gravity of his crimes outside of them being "bad", he's shown to be genuinely remorseful about them once he comprehends what he's done and is tormented by his guilt over the murders Ryan manipulated him into.
- I Want My Mommy!: Spends his final moments before getting the chair crying for his mom.
- Insane Equals Violent: Deconstructed. Cyril is regarded as a violent, dangerous inmate, but most of his outbursts are self-defense or the result of Ryan's manipulations. It's clear that what Cyril actually needs is psychiatric help, but neither Ryan nor the judicial system allow him to get it.
- Kindhearted Simpleton: When left to his own devices, Cyril is a sweetheart who keeps to himself and never goes out of his way to hurt anybody.
- Love Makes You Evil: The only times he acts immorally are out of loyalty to Ryan such as his murder of Preston Nathan.
- Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency: While not outright malicious, his lack of self-control makes him extremely dangerous to be around, and his gullibility means he has no problem going along with Ryan's schemes.
- Morality Pet: A weak one, for Ryan.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Look at him, scrawny, yet one of the best fighters in Oz.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He feels deeply guilty over killing Preston Nathan and Hamid Kham.
- Nice Guy: Outside of his temper, Cyril is good-natured to a fault and one of the few people in Oz to take responsibility for his actions.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He's got the brain of a 5-year-old and the temper of a homicidal maniac.
- Sanity Slippage: The entire 'Jericho' arc.
- Shrinking Violet: He prefers to be left alone, and can most often be found keeping to himself or standing quietly near his brother.
- Siblings in Crime: with Ryan, although he doesn't understand what's happening much of the time and is more of an Unwitting Pawn.
- Before the accident that caused his brain damage, Cyril ran in gangs right alongside Ryan.
- Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: A rare dramatic version. Cyril is brain damaged, making him both sweet-natured and easy for his coolly manipulative brother Ryan to drag him into his schemes.
- You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: You really, REALLY wouldn't.
Seamus O'Reily
Seamus O'Reily
Played By: Kevin Conway
Prisoner #03P138. Convicted February 3, 2003 - Murder in the first degree. Sentence: 34 years, up for parole in 16.
The abusive, aggressive father of Ryan and Cyril. He's sent to Oz after being convicted of murder.
- Abusive Dad: He regularly and viciously beat Ryan and Cyril when they were growing up, and killed Ryan's little sister for annoying him with her crying. He also claims to have suffered under a similarly violent father himself.
- Alcoholic Dad: It's frequently mentioned that he's a drunk and he's shown to be an Abusive Dad.
- Butt-Monkey: His life has been one long bout of misery. He took it out on his wife and kids, which just made his life get worse.
- Easily Forgiven: He abused his two sons for years and even killed their baby sister but Ryan is still quick to reconcile with him after Cyril's death.
- Freudian Excuse: He suffered under the thumb of a father just as abusive as he was to Ryan and spent much of his adult life in and out of jail or in poverty and struggling with alcoholism. He tearfully admits to Ryan in the finale that he wanted to be a good father but he simply never caught a break. Overall, it's not hard to see how he ended up so rotten.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: He would fly into rages and beat his kids over damn near anything.
- Hate Sink: An alcoholic, abusive asshole and manages to be even worse than Schillinger's father.
- Hot-Blooded: It doesn't take a whole lot for him to get angry.
- Jerkass: The man has zero redeeming qualities. Hell, he makes Ryan look downright friendly by comparison.
- Never My Fault: Seamus refuses entirely to accept responsibility for the horrible things he's done, remaining unrepentant and indignant.
- Old Convict: He is convicted of murder in the final season at sixty years old and has to serve at least sixteen years, making it very likely, given his hard past, that he will die in prison before he gets out.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's casually racist, sexist and dismissively refers to Cyril as a "retard".
Liam Meaney
Liam Meaney
Played By: Seth William Meier
A soldier of the Irish and one of Ryan O'Reilly's henchmen. Replaced Timmy Kirk's position after Kirk joined The Christians.
- Bit Part Bad Guy: He basically only turns up to give O'Reily a mook to get information from after Kirk leaves the gang.
- Elite Mook: He seems to have a lot more standing than the rest of the Irish with Ryan, outside of Cyril.
- Flat Character: He doesn't really do much other than act as one of Ryan O'Reilly's mooks.
- Mauve Shirt: He gets little characterization and exists mainly to give O'Reily someone to talk to, but he survives most of the series.
- Noodle Incident: It's never explained how he got into Oz.
Padraig Connolly
Padraig Connolly
Played By: Brian F. O'Byrne
A member of the Provisional IRA who fled to America. He is briefly held in Oz pending deportation to the UK to face trial.
- Aerith and Bob: Appropriately enough for an Irish nationalist he uses the original Irish spelling "Padraig" rather than the anglicized "Patrick".
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: He's apparently wanted for some pretty serious crimes in England, but his actual charge is illegal entry.
- Artistic License – Law: Lampshaded, McManus points out that he should be in a federal prison or INS detention centre not a state facility like Oz. He was apparently moved there because he was in danger from UVF sympathisers in the federal system.
- He claims he'll be executed in England but the UK abolished the death penalty in 1969.
- Church Militant
- Informed Ability: Supposedly extremely dangerous but the only bomb he built onscreen was a dud.
- No True Scotsman: He considers the Irish-American prisoners to not be truly Irish.
- Western Terrorists
Daniel Meehan
Daniel Meehan
Played By: Malachy McCourt
- Cool Old Guy: He ends up being the closest thing to a father Ryan O'Reily ever had.
- Foil: To Jara. They're both religious authorities and father figures who try to redeem a violent criminal they share an ethnic and cultural identity with, but Meehan is a white Irish Catholic priest rather than a Black African shaman.
- Good Shepherd: He's very, very good at what he does. In fact, the only reason he's in Oz is that he was too good of a priest: he struck a police officer who was hassling one of his parishioners during a protest.
- Irish Priest: A textbook example.
- Nice Guy: He barely knows O'Reily and yet he makes a point of helping Cyril and attempting to renew Ryan's faith in the Catholic Church.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His efforts to help Cyril give Peter Schibetta a motive to murder him.
- No Dead Body Poops: Averted.
- Oire Land: Played by a native Irish actor, though never explicitly mentioned in the show.
Patrick Keenan
Patrick Keenan
Played By: Dylan Chalfy
- Asshole Victim: He's a vile excuse of a human being so absolutely no one will mourn for his brutal murder at the hands of O'Reily.
- Hate Sink: Has no other characterization aside from being a repugnant rapist who takes pride in his actions, so it's easy to cheer when O'Reily breaks his code of not dirtying his hands for the first and only time and murders Keenan himself.
- Jerkass: A vicious rapist who picks up fights with other inmates for the sake of it.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Hoyt certainly thinks so as he openly mocks Keenan for it.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He's disposed quickly but Arif witnesses the murder and is close to getting O'Reily responsible until he frames another inmate.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Is murdered soon after his introduction.
