Quotes from Tim Pat Coogan

It is easy to scoff at these ideas, or to point out the difficulties of implementing such schemes when actually running a normal peacetime Government. But Collins was a unique combination of the visionary and the practical.

Speaking in Irish he explained that while he would like to deliver his speech in Irish he did not have enough command of the tongue to express himself properly and therefore he was going to continue in English. However when he spoke in English it was to begin by saying: 'Some of the members do not know Irish, I think, and consequently what I shall say will be in English.

Dr Cohalan, the Bishop of Cork, who pronounced a decree of excommunication on 12 December 1920. In fact the Bishop was extremely even-handed and judicious in his condemnation of violence

he had detailed, well-thought-out proposals for a campaign of films, posters and press publicity to win the people to these ideas. Collins had political skills and powers of oratory of which the least that can be said is that he was better equipped than most men to make his dreams come true.

The debate lasted for thirteen days of private and public sessions during which de Valera behaved as if he were motivated, not by precepts of Republicanism, but by notions of the divine right of kings. One commentator has written: 'Whenever the President wanted to say something he seemed to act almost as if he had a right to determine his own procedure.'87 In all he interrupted the proceedings more than 250 times.

it is the duty of the Government, through its servants, to protect the lives and property of the citizens, especially the innocent, unoffending citizens.

The financial cost20 was around £47 million, an appalling sum for those days. The cost in idealism, energy, and enthusiasm was probably higher. Bitterness, cynicism, disillusionment, emigration, censorship, clericalism and stagnation became the hallmarks of Irish society

Besides the sinfulness of the acts from their opposition to the law of God, anyone, be he a subject of this diocese or an extern, who, within the diocese of Cork, shall organise or take part in ambushes or kidnappings, or shall otherwise be guilty of murder or attempted murder, shall incur by the very fact the censure of excommunication.

he moved that the press and public be excluded so that misunderstandings could be cleared up. Collins refused to let him get away with the ploy and read out the credentials which the plenipotentiaries had received, saying that the secret instructions should not have been read out without them.

For as the poets and the warriors fell by the wayside the bureaucrats took over.

However de Valera got his way with the private session suggestion. He had two major objectives in following this course. One, he wanted Dail approval for the sort of draft treaty he felt should have been signed. Secondly, he returned to the charge of signing without permission:

the State that emerged from the civil war frustrated Ireland's imagination. Collins himself might have been similarly frustrated, despite his mighty powers. The sheer strength of the forces massed against him in the North make it very hard to see how his efforts to achieve unity by force could have succeeded.

The evidence, however, appears to be inescapable that, the civil war won

Collins would have had to resolve within himself the tensions of his dual role. Head of a democratic Government, head of a secret society which in fact regarded itself as a Government within a Government. Conspirator versus democrat. Destroyer versus builder. He might not have been able to resolve these conflicts and might have disintegrated in drink or disillusionment.

I should have got the chance which I felt would put us over and we might have crossed the bar in my opinion at high tide.

Collins' comment was: 'a captain who sent his crew to sea, and tried to direct operations from dry land'.

With Collins gone the major political personality left in the Free State was on the other side, de Valera.

Sean Etchingham said of them, 'the women in the Dail will show they are the best men in it'.

a local priest, Canon Cohalan of Bandon, preached a famous sermon in which he thundered: 'The day Michael Collins was killed where was de Valera?

de Valera had better fortune in efforts to regain power. His pacific arguments of August had not found acceptance. A line more likely to secure extremist support was again espoused with such success that by January 1923 he had regained influence once more with the Republican military leadership to a point where he was in a position to draft a statement for Liam Lynch rejecting peace proposals.

He wound up with a ringing declaration that he had stood over deeds which had caused excommunication, that he still stood over them, and appealed to people to stop quoting the dead. His objective was to achieve something which the dead, the living, and the children yet unborn would approve of

His objective was to achieve something which the dead, the living, and the children yet unborn would approve of

We'll not have this Treaty executed. Let us rather execute the man who signed it for us behind our backs.'36 Griffith said of the article in which the foregoing occurrred: 'I say that is a deliberate incitement to the assassination of the plenipotentiaries and they won't get off with it... I know the atmosphere which is being prepared. You may assassinate us but you won't intimidate us.

In Desmond Ryan's inspired phrase, there continued the 'long wrestle between ghosts and realities with all the stored-up spleens of five years flaming through the rhetoric'.