Meaning of Maroon and Green

Well I am reading this book for the second time for the sake of a class I am currently taking, and there is one thing which had confused me in my first reading, and still remain a bit uncertain about.

And that was the significance of the brushes which Dante had, in which it talks about how she had one brush of maroon for Michael Davitt, and one of green for Parnell.

Though I did some research on the two men and so I have the background information on who they were, but I do not see the significance of these two colors in relation to them.

As the idea of connecting maroon and green to Parnell and Davitt, had appeared more than once within the story.

Well in my English Ap class the color green is relating to Ireland while the color is referring to the State or the government.
On the first chapter:
O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.

The rose is the color of maroon or red referring to the government or state while the "little green place" is referring to Ireland in which James Joyce likes to refer to.

His song:
O, the green wothe botheth

He's a child slurring the two lines together to remember them not realizing that he combined green and rose blossoms. However since this is James Joyce's biography of a sort and he's looking back at it, he recreated the lines to his own mirror, connecting the church and state together.

Yes, that was the interpretation in my college English class as well. Here's a bit more on colors in the novel (scroll down to the bottom):

http://www.shmoop.com/literary-devic...-allegory.html