BALLYBAY STUDENTS LAUNCH 1916 CENTENARY PROJECT FOR SCHOOLS

Michael Fisher

Students from Ballybay Community College have helped to launch a nationwide programme for schools to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising in 1916. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys T.D., visited the College yesterday. She expressed the hope everyone would get involved in celebrating this important moment in Ireland’s history. The County Monaghan town was chosen for the event to emphasise that the centenary celebrations should be less “Dublin-centric”, according to the Minister.

Minister Humphreys joined the Editor of the Irish Independent, Fionnán Sheahan, to unveil a special Ireland 2016 Youth and Imagination Programme supplement for students, teachers and parents, being distributed with today’s copy of the Independent. The newspaper is also running a series of ten special magazines, the 1916 Collection, to be published fortnightly over the next six months, starting tomorrow. Both supplements are being published in partnership with University College Dublin and the state’s 1916/2016 centenary programme.

The centenary committee, chaired by the Minister, is seeking to encourage school students to study their family history and to establish where their relatives were during the turmoil of 1916. The National Archives has put the 1911 census online and recently added a selection of parish registers.

Minister Humphreys said the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme was an invitation to everyone on the island of Ireland and to the global Irish community, to look back on the events of 100 years ago which shaped the nation, to consider the amazing things achieved over the last century, and to look ahead to the next 100 years.

One element of the programme which the Minister said she was particularly interested in is the ‘Proclamation for a New Generation’ project whereby students …