Mick Clifford: Fuel protests at GPO symbolic of how our democracy conceived in 1916 has evolved

In contrast to the solemnity and poignancy of the ceremony to mark the Easter Rising last Sunday, the protest 48 hours later showed an Ireland riven by division and resentment

Captain Eva Houlihan reading the Proclamation outside the GPO on Easter Sunday. Picture: RollingNews.ie/Sasko Lazarov

A light rain began to fall as Captain Eva Houlihan stepped forward with the Proclamation. She unfurled the parchment there in front of the GPO and read it in full, just as Pádraig Pearse had 110 years ago. “Irishmen and Irishwomen, in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.”

The ceremony last Sunday on the hallowed site of the 1916 Rising was tastefully conducted with due solemnity. There was the usual sense of poignancy about it concerning the leaders. Their sacrifice was the defining feature of the Rising, awakening among the public the sense of outrage and patriotism that propelled the country towards independence, or at least the degree of it that was achievable.