The big fellow’s legacy

Michael Collins’s vision of Ireland as a centre of economic excellence has been compared by many commentators both to our Celtic Tiger excess and our current woes, writes John Daly

THE military achievements of Michael Collins remain a remarkable chapter of Irish history. But it was his inspirational vision of Ireland as a centre of economic excellence that marked him as a forward-thinking modernist.

The comments came from Simon Coveney, the agriculture minister, as he launched a book detailing many of the orations given annually at Béal na mBláth, the site of Collins’s killing during an ambush on Aug 22, 1922.