Dublin still split on Easter Rising
Commemorative stamps are being issued. There will be fly-pasts by the air corps and the Proclamation, declaring the nation's independence from Britain, will be read outside the General Post Office on Dublin's O'Connell Street. Even the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, has signalled his intention to attend.
Ninetieth anniversaries are rarely celebrated with such official enthusiasm and the decision to revive the parade is stirring up a national debate about the country's ambivalent relationship to the violent events that led to the foundation of the Irish state.
Critics, north and south of the border, fear the march past will rekindle respect for paramilitary violence, and they accuse the governing Fianna Fáil party of harnessing history to its political campaign to outflank Sinn Féin's recent electoral advances.
At one level, according to the republic's defence minister, Willie O'Dea, the ceremony marks a recognition that Northern Ireland's sectarian bloodletting is over. In his office behind Ireland's parliament, the Dáil, he defends the revival. "It's the end of the Troubles," he told The Guardian.
"For years troops were not readily available because they were on border duties, patrolling. There was an annual commemoration up until 1971 but then it stopped. Soldiers would have had to be withdrawn from the border [at the height of the violence].
"We will now have one annually. This year's parade will be a trial run for the 100th anniversary. There will be a minute's silence in memory of everyone - volunteers, British soldiers and the civilians - who died. Other countries commemorate their national independence days - Spain, France, Italy, for example - with ceremonies that have a military centrepiece."
Reverence for the martyrs of the uprising permeates the Irish state. A gilt-framed copy of the proclamation hangs in the Dáil's entrance lobby. A tricolour which supposedly flew over the bombarded GPO is being auctioned this month: keen bidding is anticipated.