The survival of the State and the building of the foundations of its present success represented the greatest achievement of Michael Collins, Senator Maurice Manning of Fine Gael said yesterday.
Giving the oration at Beal na Blath in west Cork on the 77th anniversary of the killing of Michael Collins, Mr Manning said the success the State was now seeing and the potential it was realising, were not of this generation's own making.
"History did not begin with us. Our success is not self-made," he said. "It could not happen if the foundations had not been well laid, if the roots of a strong civic culture had not been deeply implanted and the values of a democratic society not deeply embedded."
He maintained that Collins would have argued strongly that the growing wealth and prosperity in the State should be shared and spread among the Irish people.
He said many other countries had achieved independence around the same time as Ireland but few had proved stable, and few enough survived. That this State had survived "represents the greatest achievement of Michael Collins".
Michael Collins would have taken a quiet satisfaction at the way his comrades went about the unfinished business of building a new state, he said.
He would be the first to agree that "the pioneering work of W.T. Cosgrave's government during the 1920s was the defining work of this century, but he would have given credit, too, as his successors did not, to the achievements of Eamon de Valera, and in particular to the wisdom and durability of his constitution; he would have applauded the modernising energy of Sean Lemass, the anger of Noel Browne or Declan Costello in face of social injustice. "He would have rejoiced in our membership of the European Union and the opportunities it has given us, and would not have been surprised that young Irish people today are as successful as anywhere else in the world, and would have seen nothing strange in the fact that Ireland's use of its greatest natural asset - the talent of its people - lies at the heart of our current success.
"But he would also have sharp words to say about how we use that success. He would have been quick and direct in this time of unprecedented affluence to bring us back to the point of it all.
"In a letter to Desmond FitzGerald on July 12th, 1922, he wrote: `What we must aim at is the building of a sound economic life in which great discrepancies cannot occur. We must not have destitution or poverty at one end, and at the other an excess of riches in the possession of a few individuals, beyond what they can spend with satisfaction and justification. The growing wealth of Ireland will, we hope, be diffused through all our people, all sharing in the growing prosperity, each receiving what each contributes in the making of that prosperity, so that the wealth of all is ensured.'
"If our leaders today seek guidance as we enter a new century they need go no further than these words of Michael Collins; nor look further than the examples of personal probity and modest frugality, of quiet discipline and personal integrity of the men on both sides of old Sinn Fein.
"They need go no further for inspiration than W.T. Cosgrave's insistence on honest public institutions with no purpose other than to serve the public, Dick Mulcahy's hard-headed enthusiasm for the Irish language and culture, Sean Lemass's practical patriotism or James Dillon's insistence on a strong vigilant parliament as the greatest servant of all in defending the public interest.
"In other words these elements and many more are the legacy of Michael Collins. That legacy is a noble and good one. It stood us well in this century and is as good a guide as any as we approach the next."