Owen offended by ‘langer’ reference to Michael Collins

Former justice minister Nora Owen has said she was “offended” by the description of her ancestor Michael Collins as a “langer” in the official Rebel Week programme.

“It wasn’t a nice thing to do,” Ms Owen said yesterday after the Irish Examiner first reported on the controversy.

Collins’s grandniece said: “I though it was an unnecessary, derogatory term to put in there. It was not a jokey thing. This was the full programme for Rebel Week.”