An incorrect impression is given that there was a huge division between those who backed the 1916 Rising and those who fought in the Great War, according to Minister for Gaeltacht, Community and Rural Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív.
Mr Ó Cuív, a grandson of Eamon de Valera, said the Easter Rising had to be taken in the context of the first World War.
"The choices were not whether to fight or not, but whether to fight in the trenches or to fight for Ireland," he said. "But the reality was that the people involved in the Rising - if there was going to be a war - they believed they should be involved in the war at home."
Mr Ó Cuív was speaking yesterday on the Marian Finucane RTÉ 1 radio show, broadcast from the GPO, during a debate on the Rising and its significance for republicanism today.
He said that issues had to be drawn out and members of families fought in the first World War and others in the same family fought in 1916. "There is an impression given that there was a huge division there. There wasn't the clear division that people seem to think there was."
During the programme former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald said the Rising was a response to the thousands who joined the British army.
Dr FitzGerald, both of whose parents were in the GPO for the reading of the 1916 Proclamation, said the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) "thought that Irish nationalism would be extinct and would only be revived by a Rising when so many thousands joined the British Army".
The 1916 Rising was "a response to the failure of Irish nationality and not an act of continuity over hundreds of years".
He also believed that if the Rising had not happened "we could never have had the successes we had in retrospect".
Prof Eunan O'Halpin of Trinity College, a grandnephew of Kevin Barry, said: "I'm not sure that had there not been a Rising that there wouldn't have been an independent Ireland," he said. He added that the chances were an independent State could have evolved peacefully.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, a grandson of Eoin MacNeill, said they should not moralise about who was right or wrong in 1916.
The IRB had tricked Eoin McNeill. They had a plan and "whether it was right or wrong - to assert Irish liberty in one bloody revolution as they thought - they were immensely brave men". He said the Rising was " the Alamo for Ireland."
Former Fine Gael MEP Mary Banotti, a grandniece of Michael Collins, said: "His own service in the GPO was an extremely important part of his own life, but the tragedy of the civil war and his death did cast a very long shadow over the family."
