Irish President says 'We have not fully achieved our dreams and ideals' and calls for 'a new Ireland' as nation marks its birth 100 years after the Easter Rising

President of Ireland Michael D Higgins (left) has called for Irish people to take responsibility for building a true Republic in a speech before descendants of those who died in the 1916 Easter Rising.

It comes as the nation honours the 100-year anniversary of the Easter Rising, the event that is generally regarded as having led to Ireland's independence some six years later. 

Mr Higgins said that while 'our nation has journeyed many miles from the shell shocked and burning Dublin of 1916... we have not fully achieved the dreams and ideals for which our forebears gave so much'.