Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

I welcome the motion and thank Sinn Féin for tabling it and providing us with this opportunity to discuss it. I also compliment the relatives without whose determination and foresight the motion would not be on the clár. I support the motion 100%. We are speaking about the national monument at Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street which is of major significant historic importance. The idea of developing an historic quarter and battlefield site is most appropriate for the area and most appropriate as a way to commemorate and celebrate the 1916 Rising. It is also appropriate this on the clár in the run-up to the centenary of the Rising, and at a time when our independence and sovereignty are in danger, if they are not already gone, in the run-up to the fiscal treaty referendum.

The commemoration of the 1916 Rising is not only a commemoration of bricks and mortar, as important as this may be. We need to celebrate the ideas, beliefs and policies of the 1916 leaders. The Proclamation was a blueprint for the future Republic as they saw it. We need to ask ourselves how we measure up to that Proclamation. The honest answer must be that we have a long way to go. These leaders wanted to cherish "all the children of the nation equally". What would they think of 100,000 children living in poverty in 2012? What would they think of reductions in child benefit? What would they think of the targeting of children with disabilities with the refusals for domiciliary care allowance doubled in the course of the Government's tenure in office? These are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves in the run-up to the centenary of the 1916 Rising.

I fully support the motion and believe it would be an appropriate manner in which to commemorate the leaders of the 1916 Rising.

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