Thousands of schoolchildren to participate in Proclamation Day

Thousands of schools and other educational institutions will be participating in Proclamation Day, one of the flagship initiatives of the State commemoration programme for the Easter Rising.

All will raise the Irish flag and read the Proclamation in separate ceremonies which have been months in the preparation. All the primary schools in the country received their copies of the Proclamation and the national flag from members of the Defence Forces over the last six months. The secondary schools received theirs at a ceremony in Croke Park last week.

The reading of the Proclamation will be followed by a sharing of each school’s Proclamation for a New Generation, which sets out the vision and ideals of the Generation of 2016.

Students will then present a selection of music, theatre and poetry, either specially commissioned, or from the period of 1916, to which family and friends have been invited to attend.

National flag

Proclamation Day was described by the Minister for Heritage Heather Humphreys as a "once in a generation occasion".

Comdt Róisín Condron of the Irish Army will be at the raising of the national flag at St Raphael's Special School in Celbridge, Co Kildare.

The pupils will deliver their Proclamation For A New Generation and there will be displays of their work, including a model of the GPO.

First-year students at Coláiste Éanna in south Dublin will attend Irish lessons in Patrick Pearse's old school in Rathfarnham.

In north Dublin National School Project (Glasnevin), junior and senior infants have designed flags around “what it means to be Irish”.

Following the flag-raising ceremony, several children will read the Proclamation – including Ava, who is the great great grand-niece of Peadar Kearney and Emily, who is the great great grand-niece of Thomas Francis Meagher.

Students in Loreto High School (Rathfarnham) will perform Declan O’Rourke’s Children of ’16.