Michael Davitt's legacy today is a "kind of practical republicanism where the people of Ireland would be citizens, not serfs", the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has said.
Irish people today could trace an "unbroken link to those watershed times, through high rates of own farmland and own home ownership, a vibrant GAA and the continuing work of Conradh na Gaeilge", Éamon Ó Cuív said yesterday.
The Minister was speaking after he laid a wreath on Davitt's grave in Straide, Co Mayo, to mark the centenary of the death of the Land League founder.
"The west, and Co Mayo in particular, can be rightly proud of the fact that Michael Davitt was one of the most dynamic people involved in those great movements of that time."
Recalling how Davitt overcame deprivation in early childhood, physical disability and seven years of imprisonment and hard labour for his Fenian activities, Mr Ó Cuív said he and Charles Stewart Parnell had "picked up" where Daniel O'Connell left off.
"All three used the mobilisation in peaceful protest to advance remarkable political change. The institution of the boycott as an instrument of empowerment left the powerless for the first time in the driving seat."
Mr Ó Cuív said that An Post would issue commemorative stamps later this year marking Davitt's death and that of GAA founder Michael Cusack.
