The Taoiseach today commemorated the 200th anniversary of the hanging and beheading of a Protestant independence leader who demanded his epitaph not be written until all of Ireland was freed.
Robert Emmett was executed at the age of 25 in 1803 following a failed attack on Dublin Castle, then the seat of British power in Ireland. He has served ever since as one of the main inspirations for Irish republicans.
At his trial, where he was found guilty of treason, Emmett said: "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written."
In previous years, there has been little or no official representation at the annual ceremony because of sensitivities surrounding the peace process in Northern Ireland, which remains a province of Britain.
However, today the Taoiseach Mr Ahern joined some 50 descendants of the Emmett family, most of them from the United States, in the sixth such ceremony to lay wreaths in front of St Catherine's Church in Dublin where Emmett was hanged.
he wreaths were placed before a podium on which two men dressed as British dragoons stood guard beside the butcher block on which it is believed Emmett's head was cut off with a knife.
Mr Brian Cleary, chairman of Ireland's Robert Emmett Society, said the presence of Mr Ahern and of hundreds of spectators showed Emmett remained an inspiration today, when Protestants and Roman Catholics in the north have agreed to share power under the Belfast Agreement.