There's a lot of silly sneering on this thread.

A couple of small points:

The Irishmen and Irishwomen who volunteered to fight in World War II were not necessarily fighting "for Britain" - they were resisting another imperial power.

Ireland has held a commemoration of all Irish people who have died fighting in wars - our own for the right to have an independent republic, and other wars, including the Spanish Civil War, the Great War, World War II, the Boer War, the 16th- and 17th- and 18th- and 19th-century wars all across Europe, the American wars, etc, etc - every July in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, once a British barracks, before that a Viking burial ground, since that an art gallery. There are also commemorations in the Lutyens Garden of Remembrance not far away in Inchicore (a beautiful, serene garden built to commemorate the dead of the War to End All Wars (hah!)) and in the German cemetery in Glendalough.

Rather than fighting about the rights and wrongs of earlier wars, would we not be better off trying to find out how to make better ways of negotiating settlements?