Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s firm answer on Fine Gael and 1916 rising

Enda Kenny didn't mention his predecessor by name. The Taoiseach didn't have to, everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. And his swipe at John Bruton's historical revisionism was all the more effective for it in a speech that was ostensibly about another common predecessor, WT Cosgrave.

Speaking at the launch of Prof Michael Laffan's important biography of the latter in the Royal Irish Academy on Tuesday, Kenny reclaimed paternity – partial, at least – for the 1916 Rising for Fine Gael and its founders. The party would not be elbowed aside or overshadowed on the podiums in two years time, his clear message.

“W T Cosgrave was always proud to be a 1916 man,” the Taoiseach said. “He saw the Rising as the central formative and defining act in the shaping of modern Ireland. Many of those who were leading figures in the parties he led, Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael – Richard Mulcahy, Ernest Blythe, Desmond Fitzgerald, Fionán Lynch and others were also 1916 men and it was the unshakeable conviction of Cosgrave and the other founders of Cumann na nGaedhael that their party was a 1916 party and that it drew its inspiration from the memory of 1916.”

He was happy also to pay tribute to Bruton's hero, John Redmond, and the leaders of the Irish Party, "a patriotic party of very substantial achievements who embedded the principles of parliamentary democracy in our people." Its leaders, Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond and John Dillon "all deserve to be honoured in our collective memory".

But if there is to be a hierarchy of national heroes, he appeared to suggest, these were heroes of the second class. Any idea that the Rising – “the central formative and defining act in the shaping of modern Ireland” – was unnecessary would not be part of his or the party’s narrative. Inclusivity in this decade of commemoration is all very well, and very important, but not to the point of confusing the main message.