The biggest achievement of the republican project is this Republic. The immediate origins of the State are to be found in the struggle for independence in 1916-21. The Easter Rising was the opening act, writes Martin Mansergh
Undoubtedly, important contributions to achieving statehood were also made by a cumulative national effort over generations, employing different methods, ranging from the mainly constitutional and parliamentary to physical force. Popular mobilisation, various agitations and passive resistance lay somewhere in between.
The State has always acknowledged a proper debt of gratitude to those who made the historic breakthrough, especially the 1916 participants and volunteers in the War of Independence. Full Irish statehood by any path was something Britain, at least up to 1921, was not prepared to entertain.
Ireland was not a democracy pre-1914. One purpose of the Act of Union of 1800 was to block off for ever any possibility of Ireland achieving separation and independence from Britain, by ensuring that even an emancipated people would always be swamped in the united parliament.
Unionism blocked Home Rule for a generation and succeeded in truncating it, before, still unsettled, it was put on ice in 1914. Irish unionists may have had limited power in the South by the early 20th century. They still had disproportionate influence in the House of Lords and the British establishment. Few of them were democrats. Privileged minorities rarely are.
Those who instigated 1916 felt they had a narrow window of opportunity. The fate of nations was likely to be decided at the end of the first World War. The Rising reinstated Ireland's claim to full independent statehood.
Honouring the Rising is quite compatible with acknowledgment and respect for the contributions of other strands, and with building bridges towards those opposed to the Irish nationalist tradition.
Prof John A Murphy, in his Ireland in the Twentieth Century, demolished the argument that the sweeping 1918 Sinn Féin election victory standing on the ideals of 1916 was insufficient to validate the demand for independence.
My father, Nicholas Mansergh, in his 1975 preface to the third edition of The Irish Question 1840-1921, pointed out that "the Proclamation of the Republic did not subsume the rule of a Catholic majority over a Protestant minority; it stated, on the contrary, that all would be equally cherished within the confines of a restored nation. This is a statement from which there is no easy road back without going back on the revolution itself."
How far the ideal was lived up to subsequently for those on the losing side is of course open to debate.
It is disingenuous to complain of the disappearance of unionists, as in 1922 the minority transferred its allegiance to the new State. It was for some time well represented in the Irish Free State Senate. Successors of that community today are just as much beneficiaries of the remarkable progress of this society as anyone else.
As is clear from Pearse's writings, some of the inspiration behind the Rising was derived from famous Protestant patriots such as Tone, Emmet, Davis, Mitchel and even Parnell.
The Proclamation clearly envisaged a democratically elected government by universal franchise, both men and women, a notable advance on the position of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Ulster unionist criticism of 1916, while natural, is not particularly consistent, since their leaders were preparing with imported German guns to establish a provisional government of their own in 1914 in defiance of the British parliament.
In last Saturday's Irish Times, Lord Laird reminded us of the offence caused, not least to those who participated in the second World War, by comparing some unionist behaviour to Nazi methods. Later in the same article, with total inconsistency, he compares 1916 to Hitler's Munich beer-cellar putsch in 1924, and the thinking behind the Rising as "proto-fascist". The calm and considered objectivity striven for in President McAleese's Cork speech, and outreach to others, are poles apart from Lord Laird's usual outrageous contributions to public debate.
Would apologists for unionism care to assess the sectarian content of the resistance to Home Rule, including the influence of the Orange Order? Are we to refrain from drawing any conclusions today from the unionist community's choice of leader, someone who first made his reputation as an anti-ecumenical firebrand preacher?
Unfortunately, when it comes to discussing 1916 and the origins of this Republic, many contributors seem incapable of treating the subject calmly.
Most patriots have flaws, but that does not necessarily undermine their achievement. Nelson's brutal repression of Neapolitan democrats in 1799, reversing a promised amnesty, in the cause of a reactionary Bourbon monarchy, was not held against him last autumn during the bicentenary of Trafalgar.
Unionism expects the rest of Ireland to respect their traditions, especially the victory of William of Orange over Catholic Ireland at the battle of the Boyne. The State goes to considerable lengths today to accommodate them, and will this year remember the battle of the Somme. There needs to be some reciprocity and a more open unionist acceptance that the Irish people have an equal right to their freedom.
The peoples of central and eastern Europe were uniquely fortunate in 1989 to have had largely peaceful revolutions. Ireland was never afforded this opportunity. Why was the onus solely on Irish nationalists to wait, however long, until Britain might be prepared to concede independence peacefully?
The renewed annual commemoration of 1916 will be primarily a popular reflection of contemporary Ireland, and an opportunity to pay tribute to our Defence Forces on public parade, not least for their UN peacekeeping contribution. The national day remains St Patrick's Day.
What the State is emphasising is that it is necessary to dissociate a legitimate national revolution nearly a century ago, which quite rapidly won and retained the democratic support of the people, from the Provisional IRA campaign, which never won the support of nationalist Ireland, nor even of a nationalist majority in Northern Ireland.
That should be a reassuring rather than a threatening message.