Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte has accused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Sinn Féin of being involved in a "flag-waving contest" in an attempt to establish republican credentials with voters.
In a speech to his party's national youth conference, Mr Rabbitte said both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin were "attempting to appropriate to themselves political copyright over the Easter Rising of 1916, and one particular version of what it means to be Irish". It was "a pitiful spectacle, when the Taoiseach of this country starts organising military parades to shore up votes in Drumcondra".
"There is much more to Ireland than Sinn Féin's tribalism, or Fianna Fáil's narrow conservatism," Mr Rabbitte said.
"Openness, tolerance, commitment to human rights, to democracy, to solidarity, to equality and to internationalism: these are also hallmarks of what it means to be Irish."
He said a primary aim of the Labour party was to restore what he described as "the public domain". This was the space, he said, where the market was not the sole arbiter, but where "we find the values of citizenship, equity and service".
"It is where goods are distributed on the basis of need and not of personal ties or access to economic resources."