My great grandfather delivered Pearse's farewell letter to his mother. As the fires crackled around the GPO, the rebel leader wrote: "Whatever happens to us, the name of Dublin will be splendid in history forever. Willie and I hope you are not fretting for us …" He sealed the envelope and great-granddad kept it safe. By the time he delivered it, Pearse was dead.

History sees Pearse's sacrifice in terms of bloodshed. My great-granddad, Matthew Walker, saw it in the face of a mother who had lost two sons.

You won't have heard of Matthew. He was one of those remarkable figures who prefer to work behind history's stage. You may remember from school that Parnell had lime thrown at his eyes during a rally. Matthew was the friend who shielded his face with his hat. Anonymous, forgotten.

On Easter Monday 1916, Matthew – who was 69 – walked eight miles from Glasthule to the GPO. He was dressed in full Edwardian fig of top coat and top hat. He also had corns on his feet, but his generation "didn't grumble". He was determined to "to play his part".

As he entered Sackville Street, Matthew would have seen the first casualties – two dead horses belonging to the lancers. He would have felt the giddiness of the slum bystanders waiting to see blood.

He would also have seen a tricolour flying over the GPO.

For Matthew – IRB man, publisher – Easter Monday was the culmination of his life's work. He was given the task of printing Pearse's Irish War News, as bullets ricocheted around the city. Each night, he bravely walked home through the cordons.

His Abbey actress daughters, Maire and Gypsy, were 'out' in 1916 too. Gypsy, my grandmother, lost her pacifist lover to a looter's bullet. A priest refused to marry the couple on his death bed.

Despite the pain, their generation valued sacrifice. Their selflessness seems very remote as you survey today's Ireland.

Last week, the tricolour Matthew may have seen over the GPO failed to sell at auction. It had been valued at $500,000. I wonder how he would have felt about this. After the week we've just had, I wonder what he would make of the Republic he risked his life for.

If he was publishing a newspaper today, Matthew's editorial would probably compare our Taoiseach's power-at-all-costs philosophy to Pearse's. It would condemn the cynicism of hoarding power at the expense of the democracy people died for.

Coming from an age when people risked their lives for principles, what would he think of Beverley Flynn? Unprincipled Bev's belief that democracy should serve her was in evidence again last week. She said she deserved a place in cabinet. She would "flower". She couldn't understand why the media picked on her. Drop around Bev, I'll tell you why.

What would he make of the people who keep electing her? Or Michael Lowry for that matter? Or Mary Hanafin, who along with seven other deputies, still refuses to give up her teacher's pension. Or smug Mary Harney, with no party behind her.

Let's be fair to politicians, though. They're not the only self-servers living in this great Republic.

Matthew would have led his newspaper with the story of the CPSU denying people their passports. He would have been livid. A passport isn't a bargaining chip. It's proof of the citizenship fought for by people like him and Countess Markiewicz.

Not that we care about the countess any more. She would appear on Matthew's 'page 3'. (With her clothes on.) He would report that she isn't included in an MRBI poll of greatest Irish people. Neither is President McAleese. Louis Walsh is, though. What does that say about us?

Matthew would look at what the vacuous Tiger generation allowed happen to Tara and run a story warning about the same happening to under-threat Newgrange. How many would read it?

He would look at Seánie Fitz and wonder why we allowed a new landlord class of bankers and developers to be created.

He would look at the whole, sorry mess our Republic is in and scratch his head.

Over the next week, you'll hear a lot of misty-eyed manure about 'reclaiming the spirit of 1916'. The Republicanism that Matthew and others strove for wasn't notional. It was based on the solid principle that your neighbour has a right to expect your help – as you do from him.

The current mess is being made worse by a general unwillingness to take some responsibility. We know who the chief culprits were, but we all bought into the Tiger crap to some extent.

If unity helped achieve our freedom, then it can help us maintain it. The refusal by some to take a hit is not acceptable. The new Civil War of public against private has to end. We need to start behaving like a republic or stop calling ourselves one.

I wonder what Matthew would have said about that GPO flag being valued at $500,000. A copy of his Irish War News fetched €26,000 in 2007.

I'm sure he would look at that tricolour and see more than money. He would know its true value. He would know whether it was worth fighting for, or not.

He would know whether we were worth fighting for. I hope we were.

dkenny@tribune