Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy is aware, the overall commemoration and the decade of centenaries programme have been advised by an expert advisory committee. Dr. Maurice Manning, Dr. Martin Mansergh and other historians have been involved and they have done a very good job overall in advising successive Governments and the Oireachtas on the decade of centenaries programme. They did not recommend memorials and statues, although they said that it was up to local groups and so on and that they could, by all means, receive supports. There has not been a collective or centralised view on how best to go about doing this. I have an open mind on memorials for the Civil War. There has been fantastic work done by the academic community. I recently attended a conference in University College Cork on the Civil War. There was a conference in Trinity College Dublin last year on the treaty. Yesterday, we had a fantastic celebration of the Virtual Record Treasury and the restoration of all the records that were burned in the Four Courts, all of which have now been restored virtually. It is a superb achievement by all concerned-----

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