The former PD TD, Michael McDowell, recalled some of the absurdities of the Civil War after watching RTE's The Madness From Within on Wednesday night. He recounted how his uncle, Briain MacNeill, who fought on the anti-Treaty side, gave his father Eoin, then Minister for Education, a lift to the Dail in a car which had been commandeered by the IRA. Briain then continued his journey to Sligo where he was later killed by Government forces: two of Briain's brothers were in the Free State army.
Mr McDowell, whose mother Eilis, Eoin MacNeill's daughter, was a contributor to The Madness From Within, said he thought the programme was "slightly unbalanced" in that it offered no significant defence of the ideals of the anti-Treaty side, who were portrayed as "cold ideologues . . . They were flesh and bone after all, but you didn't get that impression. It just looked as if lunatics had taken over part of the asylum. If their view was so unstable and so wrong, it's strange de Valera was able to recover from it."
Many surviving veterans of the war - there are about 100 - "refused point blank" to be interviewed, according to the producer, Colm Magee. "One man said: `No, I'm not speaking to you because that's still too sensitive in my family, in my locality'. Even some of those who did speak told us as much as they wanted to tell us and not everything they knew," Magee explained. One of the most remarkable things, he added, was how many remained as vehement in their views - whichever side they were on - as they had been 75 years ago.