Our CEO, Jillian Brennan, attended yesterday’s annual State Ceremony at Arbour Hill to commemorate all those who died during the 1916 Rising. President Higgins laid a wreath during the ceremony, after which Jillian read the following reflection at the graveside.

Today, we once again honour those who have fought for Irish freedom.
More than a century on now, the remembrance of the courage and bravery
of our 1916 leaders is as lasting as the land that they honoured.
They sacrificed so much to defend the ideals of a sovereign Irish State.

The principles of the 1916 Proclamation influenced the thinking of later generations,
giving rise to political efforts to guarantee humanist values, such as religious and civil liberty,
equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens, and to pursue the happiness and prosperity
of the whole nation and of all its parts.

In the aftermath, ‘we are’ because ‘they were’.