A list of the names of all those killed in the War of Independence and Civil War should be compiled as an act of commemoration and reconciliation, Labour Party leader Mr Ruairi Quinn said today.
He said in the 86 years after the Easter Rising a definitive list of all those who died had yet to be compiled. He called on the Government to commission and publish such a list as an "appropriate monument".
Mr Quinn said: "At Easter time our thoughts turn to those who died in the 1916 rising and in the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War.
"These were the key events leading to the birth of this state. But the remarkable thing is that there is no definitive list of those who died during that period."
Despite the efforts of individual historians to publish names of those who died in the conflicts no Government-backed list had been produced, Mr Quinn said.
"It may well have been difficult to produce such a list during the course of the last century when many of those involved in these events were still alive.
"Some of the killings might not make pleasant reading. Many innocent people were killed by the British, but we should also now be able to acknowledge that there were some totally innocent people killed by Republican forces also."
He added: "But almost 100 years on it surely is something that we should now be able to confront and deal with."
PA