Centenary of the Easter Rising Centenary of the Easter Rising The centenary of the Easter Rising occurred in 2016. Many events occurred to mark the occasion. Note that Easter Day fell on 27 March in 2016 and on 23 April in 1916. The Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. On 20 January, Ireland's first ever commemorative €2 coin went into circulation to mark the centenary year of the Easter Rising. It was designed by Emmet Mullins and featured, alongside the two years, a statue of "Hibernia" aboard the General Post Office and the word "Hibernia" in Book of Kells-influenced lettering. A weekend of
Easter Rising country's militant past, and particularly the Easter Rising. The coalition government of 1973–77, in particular the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O'Brien, began to promote the view that the violence of 1916 was essentially no different from the violence then taking place in the streets of Belfast and Derry. O'Brien and others asserted that the Rising was doomed to military defeat from the outset, and that it failed to account for the determination of Ulster Unionists to remain in the United Kingdom. Irish republicans continue to venerate the Rising and its leaders with murals in republican areas of