Speech by President Connolly at London Irish Centre
Camden, London, 19 May 2026
A chairde,
I am absolutely delighted to be here in the London Irish Centre as part of my first official visit to Great Britain as the tenth President of Ireland. I know that you celebrated its 70th anniversary last September and to have served the Irish community over seven decades is an incredible achievement. I also note the wonderful plans for a new building. May I thank your Chair, Rosaleen Blair, your CEO Seamus MacCormaic and the entire team for your welcome.
Is cúis áthais dom a bheith anseo in Ionad na nÉireannach Londain mar chuid de mo chéad chuairt oifigiúil ar an mBreatain Mhór mar Uachtarán na hÉireann.
Bunaíodh an tIonad Pobail seo i 1955 agus ó shin i leith tá na doirse oscailte agus muintir na hÉireann á bhfáiltiú isteach. Is aoibhinn liom an méid sin agaibh a fheiceáil anseo inniu agus traidisiún ‘Chaife an Phobail’ á choinneáil beo agaibh.
This Centre is an integral part of the community in Britain. Not only does it offer a safe, warm and inclusive place for many to socialise, but it also offers countless essential services – from advocacy to art classes and so many in between – including information and advice, support services and survivors’ support.
I will be meeting with a group of survivors later on and I have to say my own life has been entangled with survivors, on a personal level and a professional level, for almost all my adult life so I have had the privilege of knowing it from every angle – as a domestic who cleaned in an industrial school where my own family had been, to going back as a psychologist, working as a barrister and representing survivors at the redress board, to then taking a role as a TD where I watched the unfolding of apologies and waited for action etc. So I just mention that because my own life has been an absolute spiral of going up and then back down and one can’t away from what makes us and what shapes us.
Your inclusive place here and all its services is encompassed in your three core values: community, creativity and compassion.
Each one of you plays an exceptionally important role in supporting the Irish community. From a smile or a kind word at the door, and equally importantly to providing a listening ear once people arrive, to serving a hot meal, or curating a performance. Every one of your actions in this centre ripples out far beyond Camden.
Your message and your mission is that the Irish community know that they have a place where they will be welcomed, where they will feel at home and where they will be supported. And indeed what was repeated most often as I moved from table to table today was that this is home from home and really that is a testimony to your work – the staff that work here, the CEO, the Chair and also people who volunteer, someone downstairs told me they do 40 hours a week on a voluntary basis and that is some achievement.
I want to just place that in the context of the year you were established in 1955. That year, official figures tell us that 50,000 left or homeland, I believe it is 55,000. And that continued before 1955 and afterwards and that decade saw almost a half a million people from Ireland leave our shore. Unfortunately that was repeated again in the 1980s where we had almost the same number of people leaving our shores. And that is the background within which you have set up a home from home.
I have to say the official response from Ireland was a little slow in catching up to that exodus from our country, and I’ll leave that for the politicians to meditate on, but when those thousands and thousands of people went to England we also looked the other way, and it was your centre, and the one in Hammersmith and the one that I’m going to in Leeds and others that picked up and carried out the actions on our behalf and I really want to say how grateful I am on a personal level, professional level and as the tenth President of Ireland for your work.
When I say the official response looked away, they were forced to actually look with the work of the chaplaincy throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. And in 1984 finally the Díon – and díon is a lovely word in Irish and it means roof, it means shelter, it means protection – and our Governments successively were forced to look at what was happening through their reports.
If you then go up to 1991, again we had a Dáil debate, and I checked the Dáil debates in advent 1991 looking at one of the most recent reports that set out the condition and status of some of our emigrants in Britain and what stood out with me was a number of things.
One speaker referred back to a census in 1981 – just ten years before the Dáil debate – where 850,000 people born in Ireland lived in England, and they also cited in that report that Irish people were not recognised as a distinct ethnic group at that point. He also pointed out that notwithstanding that they weren’t recognised as a distinct ethnic group, that in contrast to other immigrants and arrivals in England their rate of survival was lower – they were the only group of people arriving where their life expectancy was less than what their life expectancy would have been at home. And I just think it’s important to mention that in context, there’s many other figures I could mention, but what they said in that debate was a number of disturbing reports showing the status and condition of Irish people suffering absolute discrimination, worse than many other groups.
I said last night in my speech that thankfully that has changed. I think with that change came a realisation from different Governments that our diaspora had to be valued and recognised and they finally did that after the reports and after setting up the ESP – the Emigrant Support Programme. We finally then committed to strategies and we had our first Diaspora Strategy in 2015 and we’re now on our third one and that is absolutely progress and I know the money under the ESP supports the work here in this centre and in many other centres. That would have never happened without the various reports carried out on the ground by different groups over the decades and again we are very grateful to you for that.
Having made those changes, it allowed our arts, language, heritage and culture to thrive in Britain, we were able to reclaim our language and our identity and our culture in a very positive way that gave us confidence to embrace other cultures and other nationalities. You can be so proud of the role you have played in passing down our language, our heritage and our culture through the generations and increasingly sharing them with friends without prior ties to Ireland, and I think that’s equally important.
Is iontach an rud é go bhfuil Gaeilgeoirí ag teacht le chéile san Ionad seo le beagnach 70 bliain anois. Is ábhar bróid agus misnigh dom go bhfuil bhur Scoil na Gaeilge ag obair i gcomhair le hOllscoil Mhá Nuad chun an traidisiún seo a choinneáil beo agus a láidriú. Cuireann sibh spás cuimsitheach agus fáilteach ar fáil anseo san Ionad dóibh siúd, idir óg agus aosta, ar mian leo an Ghaeilge a fhoghlaim nó a fheabhsú. Is fiú ór na cruinne an spás sin dóibh siúd atá ar thóir cuid de chultúr agus teanga a dtír dúchais.
I know that Irish speakers have gathered here for almost 70 years, and I am delighted that your Scoil na Gaeilge and partnership with Maynooth University where I visited recently, continues this proud tradition. When I was in Maynooth it was in relation to a Climate Conference and it was inspiring with the speakers, but as someone who returned to Irish and continued to learn Irish, for me what jumped out was that an integral part of the solution to our climate crisis is within the Irish language, because they never had that false distinction between nature and the human being as exists in the English language. It doesn’t have the concept of destroying nature, of extraction from nature, it has concepts of living with nature as equals.
The convening of comhrá groups, youth clubs, and elder sessions ensures that the Centre continues to provide an inclusive space for all those who wish to speak our beautiful language, or even to learn a cúpla focal. I am very glad to see so many of you here today continuing this tradition in the ‘Community Café’.
Ba mhaith liom tréaslú libh ar fad atá bainteach leis an bpobal Éireannach áitiúil anseo i Londain agus buíochas a ghabháil libh as an bhfáilte chroíúil a chuireann sibh roimh mhuintir bhur dtír dúchais go Londain.
With the growing demand on your services, I am heartened to hear that your redevelopment plans are proceeding well and that you will opening it in September two years. It is of the utmost importance to guarantee that the work of the London Irish Centre continues for our community here.
Guím gach rath oraibh, a chairde, go mba fada buan sibh ag fáiltiú roimh muintir bhur muintire.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.