NI peace is best way to crown bicentenary - Brennan

The Government Chief Whip, Mr Seamus Brennan, has described the Northern Ireland Agreement as a major step forward. He was speaking at the weekend to announce the Parnell Summer School, which takes place from August 9th to 16th at Avondale House, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow.

The theme will be "The Republic" and it will commemorate the bicentenary of 1798 and the 150th anniversary of the Young Ireland revolt of 1848.

The school aims to place the United Irish movement of the 1790s and the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s in the wider context of Irish and international history

Mr Brennan, who is also chairman of the Government's 1798 commemoration committee, said: "The best way of all to crown the bicentenary would be to put in place and bed down a lasting settlement to the conflict which has afflicted Northern Ireland, in particular, over the past 30 years."

He also said it was entirely apt that the agreement was reached in the city where the Society of United Irishmen was founded.

"In the outcome of the negotiations, the talks participants succeeded in overcoming the dissensions between Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters, as Wolfe Tone aimed to do," he said, "we now need to build on this immensely important first step and to re-create the brotherhood of affection that animated the United Irishmen, as we seek to implement the Good Friday agreement."

The keynote address at this year's Parnell School will be by an Australian historian, Mr John Molony, who is a republican and a biographer of Thomas Davis and the outlaw Ned Kelly.

Other participants will include a former Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, the Minister of State, Eamon O Cuiv, Ms Patricia McKenna MEP, and Profs Brian Farrell, J.L. McCracken and Tom Bartlett.