Great War commemoration put the spotlight on our shared inheritance

I WAS very privileged to be invited to attend the first official commemoration ceremony for all Irishmen who died in the Battle of the Somme and throughout World War I.

It was altogether a very moving and unifying occasion which embraced all traditions and allegiances on this island.

My own family link to the events of that troubled period in Ireland and Europe is personified in the life and death of my Uncle Mick, after whom I was named. Like so many other young men at the time he enlisted in the British army in 1914 and served for some time in the Great War before returning home to join Óglaigh na hÉireann after 1916. In the event, he was one of the first volunteers in north Tipperary to be killed in action in July 1920.

Some years ago I visited the battlefields of the Somme with Glenn Barr and my former Oireachtas colleague, Paddy Harte. The monument at Messines is a tribute to their determination to remind us in this generation of our shared inheritance through the suffering and sacrifice of those who died in ‘the war to end all wars’.

My dear old friend, former Teachta Dála Pat Cummins, whose family also served in the Great War, expressed it simply and beautifully. “They were all Irishmen and we love them”.

Let us honour and respect all who died in those sad days through the Great War, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War.

We who now live in an era of peace and prosperity should build our monumentum aere perennius (monument more lasting than bronze) to their noble souls by working in harmony for the good of all Irishmen and women, North and South.

Michael O’Kennedy SC

The Sweepstakes

Ballsbridge

Dublin 4