Call to honour State’s divisive past but keep our loyalties

IRELAND’S Decade of Centenaries programme will aim to ‘broaden sympathies without having to abandon loyalties’, the Taoiseach has said.

The Government yesterday launched its new project marking key events in Irish history, in particular the momentous events of 1912 to 1923.

These include events surrounding the War of Independence, the Civil War, the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the foundation of the Free State. Micheál Martin has highlighted the need for sensitivity in commemorating some of the most divisive events in Irish history. He said: ‘The aim of commemoration should be to broaden sympathies without having to abandon loyalties.

‘We share an island where contested history can be a barrier to mutual accommodation and the reconciliation necessary to our shared future.’

‘History cannot be a self-serving narrative’

He continued: ‘History cannot be a dehumanised, reductive, simplistic or self-serving narrative.

‘And when we look back to a period of conflict, we must be especially careful to recall that history is the complex story of individual men and women, their lives, their flaws, their strengths, their struggle and their suffering, however they identified, whatever uniform they wore.’

The Taoiseach was speaking yesterday from the National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks in Benburb Street, Dublin, which will open a new exhibition in 2023, coinciding with the centenary of the foundation of the Irish Free State.

The Department of Culture is contributing €2.2million in capital funding to the project.

The centenaries programme is being supported with a further €5million for this year, up from a funding figure of €3million in 2020.