The Irish Championship of 1949 was the first ever held in Galway, and the first time the Swiss system was used for an Irish Championship. The motivation appears in part to have been to accommodate more entrants, and the move succeeded in attracting a strong field that included the defending champion, Dónal J. O'Sullivan, the 1947 Irish champion P. A. (Paddy) Duignan, the 1946 champion Barney O'Sullivan, the 9-times Irish champion J. J. O'Hanlon, the champions or co-champions of all four provinces: Robert Dundas (Connacht), P. W. (Patrick) Whelan (Leinster), John C. Hickey (joint Munster champion), and J. A. Flood (Ulster), the Irish Universities' champion (and future Irish champion) Vincent Maher, and the former Irish correspondence champion and Olympiad team member Warwick Nash.

In In the event, though, the runaway winner was Patrick Brendan Kennedy, a U.C.C. student playing in his first Irish championship, who recorded 7/7 to finish 2½ points clear of the field. His wins were against D. G. (Denis) Jackson, Nash, Dónal O'Sullivan, Hickey (on his 20th birthday), Flood, Dundas, and O'Hanlon. This was the one and only time in Irish championship history that a player has become champion with a 100% score in a tournament.

The winner's games against Jackson and (especially) Flood were the most complicated, and he had a lost position at one stage or another in both, but he handled the complications better than either opponent, and deservedly won. Nash, Hickey, and Dundas were smoothly outplayed, though the latter could and should have escaped with a draw. Dónal O'Sullivan and O'Hanlon each made slips in the opening to lose a pawn, and were demolished in one-sided games, the latter game rounding out a thoroughly convincing victory, for Kennedy's only Irish championship title.