The Republic has not fallen.

If ever there was a proof required that the govt. in Dublin was not capable of defending, encouraging and bringing to full fruition the Irish Republic then the last week was full testament to how they have failed once again. There have been many witty uses of the proclamation text over the last week or so. The Irish Left Review and the Irish examiner both have examples which skilfully set the destructive arrogance of the Fianna Fail govt. in stark contrast against the selflessness and vision of the founders of this Republic. Further commentators have noted that the Republic is dead, disestablished in 2010, last Thursday to be exact. Typically we hear that the patriot dead of the rising and tan war would be spinning in their graves.

The sentiment is understandable. The southern state has suffered a very serious loss of control over its own fate. Its laudable that people are going back to the well - to the proclamation which is not just a historical document but alongside the programme of the first dail effectively the constituting document of the Republic that was founded in 1916.

The anger of people who believe that for all purposes the Republic has fallen due to the actions of the Fianna Fail govt is understandable. Yet its mistaken so far as it believes that the Irish Republic is Fianna Fail's or the Dublin Govt's to destroy.

One version of the oath of the Irish Republican Brotherhood had its members "swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established". A republic established in principle in the 1860s and in reality in 1916 is not and never will be Fianna Fail's to destroy.

Which raises the question then of how the men of 1916 would view this. From their own words and their proclamation we know what there vision for Ireland was.

Did they envisage a 'Republic' whose governing class would welcome emigration twice in the space of three decades?

Did they envisage a 'Republic' where you are scared when your relative goes to hospital because it will probably kill them rather than save them?

Did they envisage a 'Republic' where the wealth of a generation was squandered to the defend the interests of a well heeled ascendancy, a native aristocracy of gombeens and arrogant crooks whose interest lays in their own land developer class over the mere Irish.

Did they envisage a 'Republic' which ignored the apartheid statelet's discriminaton to the north?

Connolly who was shot unconscious in a chair hardly would be happy to see an 80 year old woman in Sligo hosptial suffering from Lung cancer being slapped into a chair for the night.

The men of 1916 didnt die to establish Irish sovereignty alone. Each of them had a vision whether it be cultural (which the state is failing), educational (which the state is failing), social equality ( which the state is failing) etc etc.

If the men of 1916 where spinning in their graves last Thursday then they have been doing it for decades.

Last Thursday was a new low, another step away from the Republic, not marking the end of the Republic, but maybe marking the realisation for may people that the so called republic was not a republic and has not been for decades. What was called the 'republic' was an oligarchy geared to the benefit of the few and failing at practically every task it turned its hand to whether that be the development of robust and functioning institutions, a stable economy, a revival of our national language or maintaing fiscal control.

So has the Republic fallen. No it has not. Its still there. The task is the same task it has been for a while now - to dismantle the oligarchical states and replace them with a functioning republic.

The 6 county orange state has been broken down and is being destroyed more and more and now the Fianna Fail state has destroyed itself.

But the Republic still exists and maybe today with the prospect of the end of the gombeen state built by Fianna Fail and tolerated by Fine Gael the men of 1916 are spinning a bit slower in their graves