Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second Senator Mooney's amendment to the Order of Business. I join him in commending David Begg, who has announced his imminent retirement. As a Senator from the Labour Panel, I have had considerable dealings with him. He has played a major role in industrial relations in this country. He was always a voice of reason and one of the main movers in the huge positive contribution that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions made towards helping to resolve the serious economic crisis of recent years.
The famous Chinese diplomat, Zhou Enlai, was once asked if he felt the French Revolution had been a success and he responded that it was too early to say. I wish that Senator Norris had taken some stock of that before he with his usual gusto drove a coach and four through the whole history of 1916 and came out with what to me seems a shocking statement that the leaders of 1916 were traitors. That is absolutely indefensible. Whereas I fully agree with his point that John Redmond deserves to be commemorated and was a decent, honourable and fine Irish politician in the tradition of Parnell, O'Connell and Grattan, to try to have revision on that at the expense of the leaders of 1916 is a non-starter.
It must be remembered that Henry Grattan, who was the ultimate parliamentarian, had the original Irish Volunteers parading up and down College Green when he was making some of his inflammatory statements in the old House of Commons. From that came a whole new tradition - a different tradition from that of Parnell - of Wolfe Tone, Emmet and the Fenians. That tradition was inherited by the men of 1916. Whatever else they were, they were not traitors and they paid the ultimate price for their beliefs.
The Senator quoted Yeats to suit his purpose. Like the devil, we can all quote scripture. However, he should remember that Yeats's most famous statement on 1916 was:

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That was the beauty created by the sacrifice of 1916, which has informed Irish politics, whichever way we want to look at it, ever since. We can celebrate 1916 and honour John Redmond, and continue to work towards a peacefully achieved united Ireland, which was the ideal of all of them.