The British ambassador to Ireland will be attending the 1916 ceremonies in Dublin, it was confirmed here.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to emigrant projects in northern England, President Mary McAleese said Ambassador Stewart Eldon would be attending the ceremonies.
Mr Eldon's decision to attend epitomised the new attitude to the anniversary, she said. "His attendance says it all." Irish people recognised the debt they owed to the 1916 leaders in achieving independence.
She said the Government's celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising on Sunday will be an occasion of civic pride for Irish people.
The President rejected claims that the occasion could be hijacked by republicans, and said there was no reason to believe it would be used as a cause for triumphalism.
Irish people recognised the debt they owed to the 1916 leaders. "I haven't the slightest doubt that Sunday will be a day of proud commemoration and I have every expectation that it will be very well attended." Every country had its heroes and its villains, she said, and while some people's heroes were others' villains, the reverse was also true.
"We rightly look back on our past with pride at the men and women who lived in very different times from ours, and who made sacrifices of their lives so that we would enjoy these good times." This view was held by the vast majority of Irish people and would be celebrated on Easter Sunday in an "understated but very real" way.
The President compared the contemporary consideration of the 1916 leaders to that of the thousands of Irish soldiers who fought in the British army during the first World War. The lives of those soldiers had been deliberately forgotten, but people had since learned to take their memories "out of the shoe box" and to take pride in what they had given.
"Whatever our background or our take on history, religion or politics, we take pride in what they gave. They did what they did in the belief that they were helping a new generation to grow up in freedom and without fear. That is true of those who died [ in Dublin] in 1916, and it's true of those who died on the Somme."
The President's remarks were her first since January, when she sparked a major debate on the issue with a speech that hailed the 1916 leaders as "idealistic and heroic founding fathers and mothers" of the State, and which blamed British imperialism for its "narrowing effect" on this country.
Mrs McAleese yesterday visited a number of support centres for Irish emigrants in northern England, including a newly-opened Irish centre in Sheffield and a sheltered housing scheme for older emigrants in Leeds.
Government support for emigrants has jumped from €4 million in 2004 to €12 million this year, and 85 per cent of this is spent in Britain.
She described as "heartbreaking" the figures which show that the Irish community in Britain has the poorest health and some of the worst unemployment of any ethnic group. Many people had left Ireland decades ago in the most appalling circumstances of abject poverty, and some who had fallen on hard times now formed part of "a trapped generation".
However, Ireland had shown it hadn't forgotten those people by increasing support in the form of grants and improved pension entitlements, she said.