State to honour Rising leader Thomas Ashe

The centenary of the Easter Rising leader Thomas Ashe’s death will be marked with a State commemoration in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery next Friday.

The Government decided during the summer on an official ceremony to remember the death of Kerry-born Ashe on September 25, 1917, after being force-fed during a hunger strike at Mountjoy Prison.

Just as the funeral of the veteran Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovoan Rossa in 1915 and Patrick Pearse’s graveside oration marked the countdown to the following Easter’s rebellion, Ashe’s funeral in Glasnevin represented the military and political re-organisation of those who took part in the 1916 Rising.