Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will reserve what I have to say about the budget until later. In the past couple of weeks, I was honoured to have been invited to go to County Sligo to commemorate the six men who were executed on top of Benbulben by the Free State Army on 20 September 1922, one of whom was my uncle Brian. While I was looking at all the documentation that surrounds the event, I was conscious of one thing, namely, that when I did a documentary on the subject, I did not want to be one-sided. There were, of course, many Free State soldiers who died in the Civil War in Sligo and elsewhere, and those men largely go uncommemorated. During the week, there was an article in The Irish Timeson this very subject. The National Army soldiers are never commemorated. There is not even a decent memorial to them in Glasnevin. Those in this House who may have seen Michael Collins's grave in Glasnevin are probably unaware that he is buried in a plot surrounded by graves of National Army soldiers buried four deep. They are more or less completely uncommemorated. During the documentary, in order to attempt to bring balance, although it was edited out, I interviewed former Minister Michael Ring, whose great uncle, Joe, a Free State general, was shot at Bunnyconnellan, Mayo, in 1922. We went to see his memorial. It had been a modest little cross about a foot or 18 inches high in the middle of a bog off the road but was broken and lying in pieces. It occurred to me that it was sad that a general in the Free State army would have a monument to him that was broken and lying on the ground. Now that we are in the decade of centenaries, I ask that somebody from the Taoiseach’s Department come in to the House and indicate what is proposed to be done to commemorate those soldiers of the National Army - those on the other side are well commemorated, with monuments virtually everywhere in the country – who lost their lives fighting for the establishment of a democratic state in this country.