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

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. Through the decade of centenaries, as a country, we have managed to remember, enlighten and give a greater, more informed perspective to our difficult and traumatic past, particularly at the time of the formation of the new State. I gave a more comprehensive and informed perspective on these issues in three significant speeches I gave on the Anglo-Irish Treaty 1921, in Trinity College Dublin, on the Civil War, in University College Cork, and on the formation of the Free State, in University College Dublin last Friday. The murder of Seán Hales was a terrible crime, objectively, not from looking back now on the past. The Deputy is correct that the contemporary Dáil records show that it was an extremely traumatic and bitter time in our history, particularly the contribution from the late Thomas Johnson of the Labour Party, in a significant speech where he called it out that week. What happened to those four young men at that time was not in accordance with the law. As I said, it represented murder.

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