Does the Irish army owe its origin to the 'drunken brain' of a Westmeath Independent editor?

It’s been one of the great puzzles of local history.
Was Athlone the birthplace of the volunteer movement in Irish politics?
Was the Irish Volunteers, famously formed at a meeting in the Rotunda in Dublin in 1913, and from which the modern-day Irish Army owes its lineage, predated by the Midland Volunteers in Athlone?
1913 was a tumultuous time in Irish politics. The third Home Rule Bill has been published and an armed Unionist opposition had been established in the shape of the Ulster Volunteers to oppose any weakening of the Union.
The Westmeath Independent and national newspapers both in Ireland and in Britain reported that on October 11, 1913, a parade of about 1,000 men took place at Fair Green, Athlone, under the banner the Midland Volunteers.
There were also reports that on October 22, 1913, an estimated 5,000 men, including many British Army reservists, paraded with a fife and drum band in twenty companies with company commanders and a general officer commanding through Athlone as part of another Midland Volunteers show of strength.
There have been claims and counter-claims regarding the veracity of such reports - with those arguing that the event occurred pointing to the photographic evidence of the committee of the so-called Midland Volunteers carrying leaflets for one of its demonstrations.
Detractors point out that it was simply inconceivable for protests of such a scale to emerge almost spontaneously in Athlone.
The journal of the Old Athlone Society in 1969 carries an article by Oliver Snoddy which comes down firmly in favour of the existence of the Midland Volunteers. One of the leaders of that movement Jack Mullany also wrote a brief account of the formation of the volunteers in the 1960s.
But national historians have been deeply sceptical about the entire episode.
The guiding force of the Midland Volunteers was the then editor of the Westmeath Independent, Michael McDermott Hayes.
The Midland Volunteers predated the formation of the Irish Volunteers which itself was the origin of the current Irish Defence Forces.The Defence Forces’ official title in the Irish Language is Oglaigh na hÉireann or Irish Volunteers. Defence Forces cap badges and the buttons on their officers uniforms also carry the insignia Oglaigh na hÉireann. The Defence Forces buttons on other uniforms still show the letters I V for Irish Volunteers.

All of this means that if the reports are accurate, it’s not a complete exaggeration to claim that the Westmeath Independent editor was the founding father of the volunteer movement, and by extension, of the Irish Army.
New light though has been shed on the entire saga in a witness statement to the Bureau of Military History, set up in the late 1940s to gather the first hand accounts of people who played a part in the War of Independence or Civil War.
The witness statements have recently been digitised and are available online.
Dermot Murtagh, a solicitor and partner in the firm Fair and Murtagh, and father of current historian Harman Murtagh, told the bureau that there was a parade of “nationalist volunteers” in Athlone prior to the Rotunda meeting. He said the story of the parade was well known to all the old natives of the town.
However, the circumstances of that parade, as he describes it, are both intriguing and revealing.
In his statement written in 1949, he said: “The Westmeath Independent had an Editor at that time named McDermott Hayes. He was also Press Association Special Correspondent. He was a drunken fellow and very foul mouthed to his subordinates.”
Murtagh went on to explain that McDermott Hayes was covering a district council meeting in Castlerea ... “and when he returned to Athlone somebody sold him the yarn that there had been a Great Parade of Nationalist Volunteers held in the Fair Green and that 2,000 Volunteers had paraded”.
“Hayes swallowed the story and came in to the Reporters Room of the Westmeath and cursed the two reporters for not reporting it. He abused them foully and would not listen to them when they said no such parade had ever taken place.
He wired the whole story to the Press Association and it appeared the following morning in all the newspapers of Britain.” “Somebody wrote to the Press and contradicted the story and the PA came down on Hayes and threatened to sack him.
'In an attempt to justify himself and give barren verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, Hayes got out a few hundreds handbills summoning a meeting for the Fair Green. He broached a barrel of porter among the ex-soldiers, gathered together a few band instruments, and got a crowd into the Fair Green.
The ex-soldiers and corner boys formed up behind the band and a body of about 200 marched round the Southern Station and back to the Fair Green.” Murtagh continued: “We had almost forgotten about it when the Rotunda meeting took place and at least one paper (I believe it was a Dublin paper for I remember my father saying the Editor must have been a pal of Hayes) came out with a headline “Dublin follows Athlone’s Glorious Lead”.
“Thus is history made. I think you will probably find that the conveners of the Rotunda meeting were influenced by the Athlone story. If so it is an amusing fact that the whole Volunteer movement originated in the drunken brain of a newspaper correspondent.
“Anyway that is the true story of this famous Corps and if truth is not stranger than fiction, it is at least very strange,' the Murtagh statement concludes.
The Murtagh statement does explain why the version of events held by detractors and believers alike holds water.
There was no first parade - although a 'second’ parade was created, in order to justify reports of the first.

In other words, the photographic evidence and participants' accounts related to a real event.

But the notion that a volunteer movement of thousands of local men couldn't just emerge in Athlone - and nowhere else - is also support as, in Murtagh's account, the event was manufactured.

However, the account does not settle the issue.

But if the entire concept was simply a whim of a drunken editor, why then is there a picture of a committee of the Midland Volunteers in existence?

And more significantly, why are there participants' accounts of what in Murtagh's version is simply a fantasy dreamed up by one man.
Dermot Murtagh’s account sheds some light on the curious story of the Midland Volunteers, but it does not fully explain how a volunteer force, wider than an individual Westmeath Independent editor, came to pass.