1916 medals tribute to Free State 'highly insulting' to vision of Rising leaders

1916 commemorative medals depicting a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on one side but on the reverse a dedication to the Irish Free State should be withdrawn because they are “highly insulting” to what the Rising leaders stood for, Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh has said.

Produced by a company called the Dublin Mint Office, located in an west Dublin business park, the silver-plated “Seven Signatories” medals retail at €49.95 each. They show a 1921 Anglo Irish Treaty “parchment impression featuring 'sworn to be free' in Irish Gaelic, surrounded by Celtic knot and the year the Irish Free State was established”, the company says. Each has “Free State – Saorstát Éireann” and 1922 engraved on it.

Historian Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, Chairperson of the Sinn Féin 1916 Commemoration Committee, is furious.

He described it as “historical ignorance in the extreme, reminiscent of the worst days of historical revisionism”.

The Dublin South Central TD said:

“It is in fact insulting to the legacy of the seven visionaries and what they stood for and proclaimed – an Irish Republic.”

He called on the company to withdraw the medals, apologise for the “insult and recast them appropriately with the Proclamation on it, 1916 and Poblacht na hÉireann” otherwise people should boycott the product.