State agencies must reflect today’s world

Revolutions have many things in common. One is the efforts revolutionaries make, once they have consolidated power, to ensure their version of change becomes the official narrative. This, as often as not, leads to one-dimensional, self-serving history. Writers, painters, film-makers, poets and songwriters — journalists too — all contribute to that process. Most do so with integrity and enthusiasm but not all are examples of scrupulous disinterest.

The painter Seán Keating, who was born in Limerick 130 years ago last month, contributed to the first draft of our post-revolutionary history. He did so with enthusiasm and real, unquestionable belief. His brooding, certain but yet uncertain Men of the South, which hangs at Cork’s Crawford Gallery, is an early contribution to that process. He painted it during a Civil War ceasefire and later went on to record the inspiring industrialisation of the new State.