LETTER: Proper respect for tricolour restored

SIR – The great outcome from the 1916 centenary commemorations and events nationwide, was that our flag was unfurled as a tricolour of peace. When the captain of the national rugby team urged us to wear our colours with the pride associated with a modern democracy, it was very clear to the nation that the terrorists and their admirers cannot lay claim to the flag being anti-British and wrapped around themselves in an embarrassing show of madness, heretofore. 

There is now the long awaited proper respect for our flag, as shown during that week. To include the school children and young people in the various displays of re-enactment, and indeed the education of them as to their history, has been a revelation to those of us who felt the whole thing was going to be hijacked by the likes of Sinn Féin. They were not even noticed, thankfully.

The organisers of everything were on top of their game and showed our country to have indeed become a republic of thought and aspiration. We are a nation at peace, while not forgetting the problems facing Ireland in terms of social justice and the need to take care of the poorest, for example. This in the realm of constitutional politics.

So much different to 50 years ago when I stood with my father on Bantry’s Wolfe Tone Square, when there was still the ignorance of ‘burn everything English, but their coal’ attitude of ignorance through lack of education on the ‘terrible beauty’ of 1916 and its aftermath.

Robert Sullivan,

Bantry.