 Complete the following phrase:  It has been suggested on some websites and commercial tourist items that the Irish flag was based on the Pink, White and Green, the basis for this claim being that Irish nationalist Thomas Francis Meagher was the son of Newfoundland-born mayor of Waterford, Ireland, Thomas Meagher Jr., and had designed the Irish flag based on the Pink, White and Green. Irish history, however, states that the design that would become the Irish flag goes back as far as 1830 and had widespread recognition by 1848. From March of that year, Irish tricolours appeared side by side with French tricolours at meetings held all over France to celebrate the revolution that had just taken place. In April 1848, Meagher brought a tricolour of green, white and orange to Ireland from Paris, where it is said he received it as a gesture of goodwill from a group of French women. It was presented in a Dublin council meeting and was likely patterned after the French Tricolour flag as a symbolic show of solidarity between the two countries. The green, white and orange Irish tricolour was used unofficially by nationalists as a symbol of opposition to the British government until being adopted publicly by the Irish Republican Army IRA during the 