Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has forecast a united Ireland "within our lifetime" and called for an engagement with unionists to help bring this about.
Speaking in Citywest in Dublin at a large banquet to mark Sinn Féin's centenary, Mr Adams commended the IRA and Sinn Féin supporters from Australia, the US, Britain and Europe for attending.
"We even have three people who have come the whole way from Colombia to be with us this evening," he said to wild and sustained cheering among the crowd of several hundred.
He praised the party's founders who, he said, built a movement at a time when Ireland was impoverished and demoralised under English rule. They were motivated by the idea that life in Ireland didn't have to be the way it was and "that we on this island could have freedom".
"That's what we have in common with those people," he said.
He welcomed the Taoiseach's decision to recommence a commemoration at the GPO to mark the 1916 Rising. "He should never have stopped commemorating the men and women of 1916," Mr Adams said.
"We remember the IRA volunteers of our time also," he said. "We commend their families and their communities for what they have done. Now, Ireland is a different place. The big events of the turn of the [ last] century - the foundation of Sinn Féin, the 1916 Rising, the 1918 elections, the counter-revolution, the Treaty and partition of our country, and all that has flowed from that, have changed the landscape of this island."
In keeping with the Proclamation, Mr Adams claimed Ireland did not belong to Shell or to a British queen or the "fat cats" in the Republic.
He said the same Proclamation called for all the children of the nation to be treated equally and had set its face against sectarianism.
"We do not only share the dream, not only do we believe that things could be different, but we are actually going to be the generation that lives in a united Ireland." The electoral rise of Sinn Féin was evidence of this.
However, he told his
audience that Sinn Féin "had
no monopoly over Irish republicanism" which was
"close to the hearts of the plain people of this island".
Turning to unionists, he said they had started to debate among themselves where they stood in relation to the rest of the island.
"I know that the various initiatives by the IRA have caused huge difficulties for some sections of republicanism," but he added: "Everybody doesn't have to agree with what the army did. Everybody doesn't have to agree with what I say or what other people in the leadership say. We are not leading sheep."
He said what they all had in common was that they were going to win and stick together.
Implicit in that was the need to engage with unionism. "It is to open ourselves up to listen to their fears and concerns, making it clear that the days of second-class citizenship are over."