Career
Born in Limerick, he was a student for the priesthood at the Irish College in Paris, but left and made a runaway match with a convent schoolgirl, Bessie McCoy, who eloped with him. He was imprisoned on six occasions for his part in the Land War. At the 1885 general election he was elected unopposed as Member of Parliament for South Galway and held that seat until the 1900 general election.
His re-election in Galway was unopposed in 1886 and 1895.
In the same election he stood in Waterford City, but failed to unseat the Parnellite John Redmond. The two factions of the Irish Parliamentary Party reunited for the general election in 1900, but Sheehy did not stand again and was out of parliament for the next three years.
After the death in August 1903 of James Laurence Carew, the Independent Nationalist Member of Parliament for South Meath, Sheehy was selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate in the resulting by-election in October 1903. Carew had allegedly been elected in 1900 as a result of a series of errors in nominations, and his predecessor John Howard Parnell stood again, this time as an Independent Nationalist.
Sheehy wonwith a majority of more than two to one, and held the seat until he stood down at the 1918 general election.
David was the son of Richard Sheehy and Johanna Shea, and was the brother of Mary Sheehy and Eugene Sheehy. Sheehy"s two sons, Richard and Eugene, were barristers. The writer James Joyce, who lived nearby as a youth, often visited the family home, 2 Belvedere Place, where musical evenings and theatricals took place every Sunday evening.
Joyce entertained the family with Italian songs.
In 1900 Margaret wrote a play in which the Sheehys and their friends, including Joyce, acted. Joyce took a particular liking to Eugene and had a long-lasting but unrequited crush on Mary.
Their daughter Mary is the spéirbhean longingly pursued by the protagonist in the story Araby in Joyce"s collection Dubliners. She is also the mockingly nationalst Mission Ivors in the story The Dead, which concludes Dubliners.