Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is the awards season. I have been at numerous sports awards and banquets in the past week and even today there are The Irish Timesawards. Next week the Irish Independentawards will be announced. We will have the RTE awards and the BBC sports personalities awards. We will even have the Queen’s list coming out in the new year. Only last week, we had the People of the Year awards in Dublin, which I watched on television. I was proud of the achievements of those people who made phenomenal contributions to this country.

Some of the higher awards that recognise people in this country include the freedom of the city, be it Dublin, Cork, Galway, Belfast or wherever else. A number of years ago, the Lord Mayor’s award was initiated in Dublin. I was one of the first recipients of the award and I was very proud of the honour bestowed on me by the Lord Mayor. There are also the Gaisce awards. However, those awards come and go and people forget about them. I believe we need an awards or honours system in this country where people can gain tremendous recognition for their achievements. I accept it will not be easy to do that because there will be many different views on who should get such an award. People will also have different views on who will make the award and who will form the membership of a committee to establish a national awards programme.

I never paid much attention to a national awards per seuntil I had to speak on the subject today. I decided to do some research on why we do not have such an awards system in this country. It was easy to find the answer. All I had to do was google Wikipedia and the information was before my eyes. Irish republicans were opposed to the British honours system. Irish nationalists were opposed to its Britishness and there was republican opposition to its monarchist underpinnings. Now I know why. I searched further on Wikipediaand discovered Article 5 of the 1922 Constitution which states:

No title of honour in respect of any services rendered in or in relation to the Irish Free State (Saorstát Eireann) may be conferred on any citizen of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Eireann) except with the approval or upon the advice of the Executive Council of the State.

I began to wonder why that was the case but I soon found out.