Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will briefly allude to the Century Ireland initiative. It is a fantastic initiative and I commend all involved in that, including RTE.

This period is about the commemoration of 1913, 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War but it is also about local issues. History is not solely about remembering war; it is about remembering events that happened, and events happen in local communities. Unlike the previous speaker I believe it is very important that we work together, from the Minister down, to ensure that events happen locally. As we speak, fantastic events to do with The Gathering are taking place across the country, and local people are getting involved in that.

I want to highlight an issue in which I am honoured to be involved in my town of Carrick-on-Suir, namely, the erection of a 9 ft monument to Maurice Davin, the first president of the GAA and the only president to serve two terms. That event will take place on 1 June because local people from the three local hurling and football clubs, Carrick Davins, Carrick Swan and St. Mullins, along with other local people and assisted by the chairman of the Tipperary county board, Seán Nugent, came together, fund-raised and accessed grants available to people across the country to carry out such functions. The president of the GAA, Liam O'Neill, will be present for that event, as will many people in this Chamber. There is an open invitation to it and we will commemorate in our own way our famous son, Maurice Davin, who founded the GAA in 1884 in Thurles with Cusack and who was world champion in athletics at the time. After winning the British championships in 1881 he was asked by one of his fellow competitors if he thought he was the best athlete in Ireland to which he responded, "Well, I'm definitely the best athlete in Britain after today."

Davin founded the GAA because at that time athletics in this country was governed under British rules and he wanted to stamp our identity in his own way, which is the identity that became the GAA in which the Minister had great involvement over the years. It is an important moment but I raise that because it shows that people can commemorate history locally by their own actions in their own communities. That is what this decade of commemoration should be about. As I pointed out earlier, history should be remembered by citizens. Senator O'Keeffe made a valid point about the way history is written and subsequently read. It is important that local people should write the history of their own area as they know and understand it.

I commend the Minister for all the work going on and I have full confidence that the events to be held in 2016 and the other notable dates during this decade will be organised properly.