IRISH politics has been poisoned for decades by a residual bitterness between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael over a civil war caused by "a very small difference" over the Treaty, the historian T. Ryle Dwyer told the 74th Beal na Blath commemoration yesterday.
Mr Dwyer told the 1,000 plus gathering at the ceremony to mark the death of Gen Michael Collins that it was about time both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail ended their posturing and the pretence that there were real differences between them.
"According to de Valera, there really was very little difference between himself and Collins over the Treaty issue," said Mr Dwyer, the author of books on both Collins and de Valera.
"And there can be little doubt that the greatest tragedy in Ireland during the 20th century was that this `small difference' led to a civil war which left a residual bitterness that was to poison Irish politics for decades," he added.
Since Collins's death, Irish politics has been bedevilled by dreadful legacy of "posturing and blind hostility", said Mr Dwyer, adding that de Valera had lacked the courage to tell his followers that a 32 county republic was "an unattainable mirage".