Packed Béal na Bláth hears ‘Collins to thank for our changed country’

THE greatest tragedy of Michael Collins’s death was that it deprived Ireland of its best hope of reconciliation, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said.

Mr Martin was speaking at the centenary commemoration of Collins’s death at Béal na Bláth, where he became the first Fianna Fáil leader to give an oration at the site.

The Taoiseach said Collins had been shaped by West Cork and was immersed in its defining characteristics of self-reliance, determination, and compassion.

“In his short 31 years he rose from a modest West Cork home to become a leader in a struggle for independence, a struggle which is responsible for what is today one of the longest continuous democracies in the world,” said the Taoiseach. “It is perhaps the greatest tragedy of Collins’s death that it deprived us of our best hope for reconciliation.

“He was a dynamic leader who could both inspire people and, in the middle of a bloody conflict, build a new administration from nothing.

“He is a key reason why we have been able to build a country which, while it still faces major challenges, has been transformed for the better.”

As the Civil War spread, said Mr Martin, Collins did not demonise opponents or celebrate their deaths because he remembered all he had gone through with them as colleagues and friends.

He said more should be done to remember Collins’s work to try to protect Northern nationalists and his opposition to the partition of the country which had been imposed in 1920. Collins had continuously challenged London to protect the rights of nationalists in the North, and he had tried repeatedly to stop the systemic violence directed against them.

He said Collins acutely felt the outrage of creating a state based on a sectarian headcount, but he also didn’t believe that a new Ireland could be built through a deadly conflict between the two major traditions which share our island.

“For too long people ignored this fact. The truly historic breakthrough of democratic politics in the Good Friday Agreement gave to our generation, as Seamus Mallon put it, a new dispensation, an opportunity to put sectarianism and artificial division behind us,” said Mr Martin.

With an eye to more contemporary politics, the Taoiseach defended the centrist politics which dominated for the past century and said too many were intent on ignoring the modern successes of Ireland, seeking instead to portray the country as a failed State for their own cynical benefit.

“When we look back over what has been achieved in the last century I have no doubt that Collins would see a country transformed — an Irish State which has proved to the world that it can achieve great things when it is free to shape its own destiny.

“We should never forget that in 1922 Ireland was one of the poorest countries in the world. Michael Collins’s father had himself survived one of the most traumatic and deadly famines ever recorded.

“We have progressed from being one of the most peripheral and poorest countries in the world to the most globally connected of all in terms of trade and employment.

“No one doubts that we today face urgent challenges, but those who dismiss the progress we have achieved are denying reality, and if they fail to respect what our country has achieved, then how can anyone expect that they will protect this progress?” he asked.

Mr Martin said more needed to be done to confront “the new revisionism of those who try to denigrate our country’s achievements and who try to claim legitimacy for violent campaigns waged in the face of the opposition of the Irish people.

“We have to give no quarter to their attempts to link themselves to the men and women who fought our revolution over a century ago.”

Collins was, the Taoiseach said, a key reason why we have been able to build a country which, while it still faces major challenges, has been transformed for the better.

“For this, today, as much as ever before, he deserves our gratitude and he deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest Irishmen to have ever lived,” said Mr Martin.

In his remarks, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar commended Mr Martin for accepting the invitation to the ceremony, for his leadership over the past two years, and for keeping a portrait of “the greatest Corkman” on his office wall.

He described Béal na Bláth as “a painful site of memory” for those connected with Collins, who was shot dead there on August 22, 1922.

“It is a place of death, forever associated with a senseless killing in an unnecessary war in which brother turned on brother,” said Mr Varadkar.

“It is fitting that we gather here and remember, because what happened here 100 years ago changed the course of Irish history.”

In honouring Collins, he said, we reaffirm our belief in the principles for which he gave his life.

“These are the foundation stones of our State: the right of all nations to self-determination; democracy and the democratic institutions; freedom both personal and political; the rule of law; respect for others; and the unshakeable belief that Ireland can be ‘a shining light’ onto the world,” he said.

“Collins was the great prophet of freedom who was killed before we reached the promised land. That was the great tragedy of Béal na Bláth, and the curse of the Civil War.”

The Fine Gael leader said Collins had been both an idealist and a realist.

“Unlike others, whose defining idea was the achievement of the Republic, who found themselves unable to compromise to bring it into existence, Collins viewed freedom in a different way.”

The Treaty, as Collins had predicted, had given Ireland “freedom and the freedom to achieve more freedom in the future”, he said.

“Others fought on for decades, only to accept Collins’s approach almost a hundred years later.”

Referring to Collins’s vision that Ireland would be “a shining light in a dark world”, Mr Varadkar said that dream had defined our foreign policy for a century.

“Our membership of the EU was another stepping stone to freedom. It helped us replace an inward vision, ‘ourselves alone’, with a new self-confidence about who we are and what we could achieve, all of us together.”

Collins never intended his legacy to be the last word on Irish freedom, said Mr Varadkar, instead achieving the freedom to find our own path to it.

“Michael Collins’s life was Ireland. His legacy is Ireland too,” said Mr Varadkar.

Collins’s great-grandniece Eleanor Moore also addressed the crowd, saying the weekend had been “amazing for the family”.

Throughout the politicians’ speeches, a very small but extremely vocal group waving four Republican flags jeered, whistled, and chanted “traitor”, falling silent only for Moore’s address, the minute’s silence, the national anthem, and any portion of the speeches delivered in Irish regardless of their content.

They were routinely drowned out by applause from the large audience in attendance .

There was a moment of drama halfway through the Taoiseach’s speech, when a young member of the Defence Forces collapsed in the heat, to the visible concern of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, Defence Minister Simon Coveney, and other dignitaries. After the ceremony, the Taoiseach was seen chatting and joking with the young soldier. A spokesperson for the Defence Forces confirmed the soldier was in good health.

At a press conference after the event, Mr Martin was reminded by The Echo that two years ago he had said he, Mr Varadkar, and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan might go for a pint. When asked if that pint had happened, he replied: “Do you know, it hasn’t.” Referring to the Diamond Bar in Béal na Bláth, he laughed: “It’s up the road. You’d never know.”

Among those in attendance at the ceremony were Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lt General Seán Clancy, Canon Humphrey O’Mahony, Justice Minister Helen McEntee, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, Defence and Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris, and EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness.