James Burke (Roscommon politician)
Roscommon politician (20th century)

James J. Burke (died 12 May 1964) was an Irish Fine Gael politician. A farmer by profession, he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) for the Roscommon constituency at the 1954 general election.
He was re-elected at the 1957 and 1961 general elections. He died in office in 1964, and the July 1964 by-election held for his seat was won by his widow Joan Burke.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Burke (Roscommon politician)” is roscommon politician (20th century). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Burke and Roscommon, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6130499. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1954, 1957 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Burke (Roscommon politician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.