A RECENT article in The Irish Times by Stephen Collins (August 7, 2026) argued that Ireland should give up on honouring the heroes of the Easter Rising.

This was the insurgency in Dublin in 1916 in which Patrick Pearse and his fellow revolutionaries declared Ireland to be a republic independent of Britain.

That insurgency was put down and the British firing squads executed fifteen leaders but the idea of the republic was taken up by Sinn Féin and two years later when they entered government they established that republic.

The Irish Republican Army then fought a war against Britain. There were dirty tactics on both sides. This war ended in a treaty which acknowledged the partition of Ireland and the establishment in 26 counties of a free state.

The leaders of the Easter Rising are honoured every year by the Irish president and the armed forces at a ceremony in Dublin.

But what of those who held fast to the idea of a republic and did not accept the treaty? In the first instance they were defeated in the civil war which followed.

But there were resurgences throughout the following century, most notably in the 1950s when the IRA attacked police stations along the border and in the decades after 1970 when various republican movements but primarily the Provisional IRA, through murder and sabotage, protested against the Union with Britain and the right of........

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