Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

-----which I am sure were welcomed also. With regard to the intention of the speech, which was to make the case for an inclusive version of commemorations, I suggest that, in regard to Britain and Ireland, the greatest case for inclusion has been made in Britain by Mr. Eric Hobsbawm, for example, in respect of the working people who died in war. In Ireland, there is a case in the new history for the working people who took part in the War of Independence and Civil War and who were victims of many of the actions. They same holds true for those who took part in the Great War of 1914-18. I welcome the Taoiseach's reference to this. The project of inclusion should not be confined to constitutional statements.

The next part in the preparation of this inclusion is the making available of the archives which would be of considerable benefit to the people the Taoiseach was addressing, both on the British and the Irish sides. The other part of it is the Irish in this period who served abroad in international institutions and who continued to do so. In other words, the commemoration should be about not necessarily the heroism of war as if it was inevitable but also those to whom I referred.

It would be absurd to go through the period without celebrating the context to which the Citizen Army addressed itself, to which Seán O'Casey addressed himself - the slums and so forth - and the socioeconomic generations that were lost before the founding of the State and that continued to be lost. I am making a case for inclusion widely defined to include the socioeconomic aspect to which, for example, the democratic programme of the First Dáil was addressed.

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