The patriotism of Irish people, North and South, has been clearly manifest in the overwhelming vote of support for the Belfast Agreement and the willingness of Irish people of all traditions to alter Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution as a means to ensure peace, Ms Mary Banotti MEP told the annual Michael Collins commemoration at Beal na mBlath, Co Cork, yesterday.
Ms Banotti, a grand-niece of Gen Michael Collins, who was assassinated at Beal na mBlath in 1922, was speaking to a crowd of several hundred gathered for the commemoration.
"However, we are still, unfortunately, despite the great brave steps taken, producing young people who, however misguidedly, feel that it is more patriotic to carry Semtex and to plant bombs than it is to work hard and use their education to their own and their country's advantage.
"We must, however, be prepared to critically examine how susceptible young people continue to be fatally seduced by the cult of violence. We must ask ourselves are these young people seeking legitimacy for their actions as an historical progression from the past?"
The massacre at Omagh brought Ireland into lists headed by countries like the former Yugoslavia or Algeria.
"Here, as there, we have our own people being slaughtered by our own people. Here, as there, our people voted for something other than violence."
The bombers insist that the will of the people counts for nothing. She expressed her belief that if Michael Collins had been able to vote in such a referendum, he would have voted for peace. She quoted him as "a fighting man" who knew when to choose peace: "I am a man of war in the day of war but I am a peace man in the day of peace."
Had he been able to vote for peace she believed he also would have been the target of the Omagh bombers. "What was done so many years ago here at Beal na mBlath would have been done again by people such as these, for murderers do not accept democracy."
She said the Ireland which Michael Collins tried to fashion would have no place in it for the bombers of Omagh. She said all the leaders on the island of Ireland, North and South, had a sacred responsibility to give leadership and to demonstrate the futility of violence in achieving a better future for all the citizens of the island.
Along with Ms Banotti, the Collins family members present at the commemoration yesterday included his niece, Ms Nancy Hurley, and his grand-nieces, Mrs Nora Owen, the former Minister for Justice, and the West Cork solicitor, Ms Helen Hoare.
A minute's silence was observed for the dead of Omagh and a decade of the rosary was recited in Irish by Canon Michael O'Brien, of Carrigaline.
Among the attendance was the lone survivor of the 1922 ambush, Mr Jack Kearney, of the Old IRA.