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time for change?

Sinead O'Connor has written a new version of the Irish national anthem

It’s to the tune of Amhrán Na Bhfiann but the lyrics have been changed.

Sonya Mulligan / YouTube

SINEAD O’CONNOR HAS written a new version of the Irish national anthem calling the current version “very war-like” and “all testosterone and not much oestrogen”.

O’Connor, who recently applied to join Sinn Féin, has kept the same melody as Amhrán Na Bhfiann but has changed the lyrics so they are based on the 1916 proclamation.

In a Facebook post published last night, O’Connor says she wrote to Taoiseach Enda Kenny earlier this year to see if the words of the national anthem could be changed to “make the lyrics more appropriate for the 21st century and not so war-like.”

O’Connor says she received a reply saying there are no plans to change the anthem.

The writer and singer says she only wrote the song yesterday performed an “extremely clumsy performance” of it for the first time at her gig in Vicar Street last night.

Here are O’Connor’s lyrics:

We declare our right
to ownership of this land
to be sovereign
and indefeasible.
Nothing has extinguished that right
nor can it be extinguished
except by
the destruction of the people

We were promised civil liberty
equal rights and equal opportunity
All lies galore, all we ever got was war
Now we chant for a new country

And we place our cause
before The Most High God
whose blessings
we invoke upon our hearts
In this supreme hour
let us by our valour
prove worthy
of our august destiny

We were promised civil liberty
equal rights and equal opportunity
All lies galore, all we ever got was war.
Now we chant for a new country.

Let us know what you think.

Read: Sinéad O’Connor and Shane McGowan join Easter Rising film >

Read: Here is Sinead O’Connor’s call for non-violent revolution on the Late Late Show >

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