President Higgins opens visitor centre at Kilmainham

President Michael D Higgins has said the country must continue the work of building a Republic of which the 1916 rebels would be proud.

Opening the new Kilmainham Gaol Museum visitor centre President Higgins said the commemorative events to mark the Easter Rising had “allowed us to re-engage with the Ireland of the early 20th century”.

President Higgins added that this had allowed people to focus on the “many different traditions, ideas and ideologies that impelled the stories of bravery, vision and determination that would build a nation”.

He said: “In that process of re-engagement we can, across a distance of years, understand 1916 as being about so much more than military or political actions. It was also of course an act of imagination, a social as well as a national revolution, whose leaders were inspired by the idea of creating a very different and much improved Ireland.

“It was an Ireland of equality and social justice that was sought; an Ireland of democratic citizenship and of collective participation that, in the words of the Proclamation: guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally.”

The new visitor centre, in the former courthouse building, will now be open to 330,000 visitors who come to the site every year. However, it is hoped that overall admission can be increased to 500,000 per year as a result of the new centre.

Simon Harris, acting Minister of State at the Department with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works, said the museum will provide a place for people to “come to reflect on Ireland’s past”.

He said: “The Government recognised the significance of Kilmainham Gaol in the context of the 1916 story and provided the necessary funding for the refurbishment work to be done through the Office of Public Works. Kilmainham therefore takes its place among the other iconic locations which are recognised as the “Permanent Reminders” included in the official 2016 Programme.”

Officially opening the new tourist attraction President Higgins mentioned many of those imprisoned in the jail.

He added: “The people of Ireland owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all those volunteers, many of whom had also fought in the Rising and the War of Independence, and who, decades later, so magnanimously gave of their time and skill in order that new generations of Irish citizens could visit this place and experience the powerful connection it provides to our history and our forbearers.”