THE GAA should jointly honour Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera to help banish the “bitterness and poison” of the Civil War, a former president of the organisation Seán Kelly said yesterday.
Delivering the oration at the annual Michael Collins commemoration at Béal na mBláth in west Cork yesterday, Mr Kelly said naming trophies, clubs, grounds or stands after both men would be a powerful gesture of unity and maturity in the modern world.
“Why shouldn’t the GAA honour Collins and Dev now? It would become a powerful symbol of unity, a statement – like the opening of Croke Park – that we are an inclusive, open and mature society and that the hatchet of the Civil War, which has pierced the heart of this nation and almost all its citizens for generations, has been buried forever.”
Mr Kelly said a gesture like this from the GAA would do far more than all the talk in the world to advance the cause of Ireland that Collins and de Valera “and all our patriots fought to achieve”.
He told the 500-plus people at the commemoration that it was time to consign to the scrap heap any semblance of bitterness and poison that might still remain after the Civil War. “We must realise that Collins and Dev had far more in common than divided them, and that the politics of meanness, begrudgery and division do not serve the free Ireland that our forefathers fought to achieve.”
Mr Kelly also told of how the memory of Collins helped inspire him as he steered the controversial rule 42 through the GAA in 2005 to pave the way for soccer and rugby to be played at Croke Park.
Last year’s guest speaker at the Béal na mBláth site, where Collins was ambushed and killed in 1922, was British film-maker Lord Puttnam, and others in recent years have included Fine Gael TDs Michael Noonan, Dan Neville and Simon Coveney.