Today is Proclamation Day
The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys TD, has said that Proclamation Day, which is being celebrated today (Tuesday 15th March) in schools, universities and education institutes across the country will be one of the major highlights of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme. As part of Proclamation Day, normal school schedules will be replaced with special ceremonies to celebrate and mark the significance of this important and revolutionary document.
Following the raising of the Irish flag, the Proclamation will be read by a student, past pupil or special guest of each school or institution. This will be followed by a sharing of each school’s Proclamation for a New Generation, which set out the vision and ideals of the Generation of 2016. Students will then present a selection of music, theatre and poetry, either specially commissioned, or from the period of 1916, to which family and friends have been invited to attend.
Minister Humphreys will be attending a series of Proclamation Day events at schools in her home county of Monaghan.
Speaking in advance of the events, Minister Humphreys said: “Proclamation Day is a once in a generation occasion, when schools and universities will collectively recognise the significance of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in this centenary year. This day is the culmination of months of work by teachers, parents and pupils, who have so eagerly embraced the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme.
“While the commemorations are primarily about reflecting on our past, the Proclamation for a New Generation initiative has given schoolchildren to outline their vision for Ireland in the future. This work will be showcased today in thousands of schools across the country. Each school will also raise their own National Flag, which was hand delivered by the Defence Forces in recent months under the Flags for Schools initiative.
“The education programme has arguably been the most wide reaching and successful element of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme to date. It has allowed our children and young people to learn about their history in a new and interesting way and it has encouraged them to think ambitiously about the kind of Ireland they want to build in the years ahead. I would like to acknowledge the huge amount of work carried out by the Department of Education and each and every school nationwide which has made Proclamation Day such a success.”