At this stage I’m not sure if the IT is being willfully naive or doesn’t really want to understand how commemoration works. Intro 101 is that commemoration is never just about the past but about how the past is remembered in the particular present. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-the-decade-of-centenaries-a-complex-history-1.4449118

To look back at 2016 as halcyon days when the govt had a handle on how we all remembered 1916 is not only denying our very different present - with the unraveling of Brexit and its reopening of the National question in the North - but also selectively remembers 5 years ago.

The commemorations of 1916 not only included very different approaches to the Easter Rising in North and South but also the Battle of the Somme and WWI. It also included criticism, especially from Republican quarters, as to the slickness of the govt ‘celebration’ of the event.

That criticism manifest in two separate commemorations of the Easter Rising - one on the date of Easter 1916; one on Easter 2016 - but the real difference between then and now is the growing electoral success of SF and the need for FFG to begrudgingly recognise them.

As for the desire to commemorate ‘both sides’ - laudable as that may be in theory - it is just not possible to demand that remembering as something as currently deactivated as partition can be done with eyes firming focused on 100 years ago as if it is a purely historical issue.

I strongly agree that the many nuances of what happened 100 years ago and how it reverberates through to the present should be explored but that requires the skills of those who work with heritage, memory and the past. It is not possible for politicians to demand it.