A different Dublin 100 years on from the Rising

The Wishing Trees of St Stephens Green would give anthropologists a field day. One was elegantly decorated with dangling cards neatly printed with lines from the Proclamation of Easter 1916, each one a wish, an ambition, or a dream for the future Ireland.

Freedom, sovereignty, control of Irish destiny, religious and civil liberty, happiness and prosperity, equality, valour, and discipline — the rebels had noble ideals.

Beside the tree representing 1916 was another one bedecked in colourful strips of paper handwritten a hundred years later by the public at large and representing the wishes and dreams for the next century.