MILITANT republicans should realise that Ireland had come far, through the efforts of preceding generations as well as the political progress made in more recent times, the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, said yesterday.
He was speaking at his party's Easter Rising commemoration at Arbour Hill cemetery.
"As a well established independent state, we have the wherewithal and the friends to build over time freedom and justice throughout Ireland by purely political means, if we are prepared to act together . .
"The actions that have happened since February have not brought any honour on the cause of the Republic. They have in fact undermined it. I would urge Northern republicans to take full part in negotiations on a political settlement and not allow themselves to be excluded from the political process."
Looking back on the 17 months of the IRA ceasefire, Mr Ahern said parts of the Irish Government had seemed more interested in "chasing after an unresponsive unionist leadership than consolidating the democratic nationalist consensus which underpinned the peace."
The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, had made a serious mistake when he refused a request last autumn for a joint meeting with Mr John Hume and Mr Gerry Adams.
And it was the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, who was responsible for changing the management of the peace process at a critical moment, substituting "a warm admirer of John Redmond for the leader of Fianna Fail."
When the ceasefire broke down the Government showed "a lack of political courage, and retreated with unseemly haste to a position of political correctness," cutting off all ministerial contact with the Sinn Fein leadership at once.
The 1916 Proclamation was read by Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark, who said he was honoured and humbled as a visitor to read this historic, this catalytic document.
It seemed to outsiders the Irish had been placed under undue pressure to forgo these ceremonies of remembrance. "Is it not perverse to argue that to remember with solemnity a call to arms then is to condone calls to arms now?" The leadership of the "Pan Nationalist Alliance" was getting ready to "sleepwalk" its followers back into Stormont, a 1916 commemoration organised by Republican Sinn Fein at the GPO, Dublin, was told by Mr Sean Mac Oscair, a member of the ardchomhairle.