Speech on the occasion of the Global Irish Civic Forum
Áras an Uachtaráin, 3rd June 2015
A Aire, A Dhaoine Uaisle,
Tá áthas orm, mar Uachtarán na hÉireann, go bhfaighim deis go minic bualadh le phobail Éireannach ar fud na cruinne agus dul i gcaidreamh leo. Go hiondúil, is mar chuid de mo choinní oifigiúla agus mé thar lear iad na hidirghníomhaithe seo – agus bíonn imeachtaí leis an pobal Éireannach mar chuid lárnach de mo chuairteanna ar thíortha i gcéin i gcónaí.
[Good evening Minister, ladies and gentlemen
As President of Ireland I am delighted to receive many opportunities to meet and engage with Irish communities all over the world. In most cases such interactions form part of my visits abroad for official engagements – but always, and I welcome it, such events are organised to celebrate Irish communities and acknowledge their contributions.]
Tréaslaím leat a Aire as an foilseachán nua. Tá sé don scoth agus níl aon amhras orm ach go mbeidh sé an-chabrach mar threoir.
[I congratulate you, Minister, on this new publication. It is of a high standard and I am sure that it will be an extremely helpful guide.]
One of the initiatives suggested in the recently published ‘Global Irish: Ireland’s Diaspora Policy’ was the holding of a Global Irish Civic Forum, to which would be invited representatives of those organisations directly working with our Irish emigrants abroad, and thus, on the occasion of this initiative coming to be, it is a pleasure to be able to welcome you all here this evening to Áras an Uachtaráin, as participants in the very first Global Irish Civic Forum.
As representatives of groups working with Irish emigrants I am particularly grateful to have the opportunity of thanking you all for the sustained, but often unseen, work which you do on a daily basis to support our emigrants as they seek to make new lives in their adoptive countries.
Many of the organisations here this evening have served a vital purpose over the decades in providing sanctuaries of Irishness, versions of home, around the globe. In halls in Camden, Boston and Melbourne their existence enabled our emigrants to stay in touch or reconnect with their culture and ethnicity, to remain in contact with their fellow emigrants from parish or county, and thus the community gatherings, and the organisations who made this possible, have addressed in their various ways, the deeper need to form communities in new and often strange environments. While the context of their founding may have changed, and new challenges have emerged, the groups you represent continue to fulfil those functions today.
There is a great diversity of organisations represented at the Forum, ranging from welfare bureaus who support our most vulnerable and marginalised emigrants, such as those who seek to support Irish prisoners incarcerated abroad, or supporting LGBT Irish in London, to bodies aimed at promoting our cultural heritage and contemporary culture, to networks who seek to create and draw on Irish connections for mutually beneficial business relationships –business networks that are now busy in places such as Estonia, Abu Dhabi and Brazil. Most organisations, of course, straddle several of these aims.
The common thread running through all these bodies is a sense of value and solidarity in our Irish identity. Without the foundation of the tireless work done by Irish community organisations throughout the world, our recent and current efforts at building new links with the global Irish would not be possible. We have been given a great foundation for our efforts to get to a new and sustainable version of Irish economic and social life. Through your sustained engagement, generations of our people abroad have made, and continue to make, an enormous contribution to Ireland’s development.
Coming together over these two days facilitates a web of new interlinking and overlapping connections emerging, new connections which will, I am sure, enhance the work that you do. This coming together is also an important opportunity for reflection on some of the wider issues associated with migration from this island; the importance of Irish culture as a unifying factor, the value, in a protected as well as in a symbolic sense, of continued maintenance of the links that bind our global Irish family to Ireland, and its importance for the evolving patterns of emigration on our Irish communities abroad.
Mar a deirtear go minic, is gné shainiúil lárnach de mhuintir na hÉireann í an eisimirce. Cé go ndéanatar díol suntais de líon na ndaoine a dfhág an tír seo le linn an Drochshaol agus sna mblianta ina dhiaidh, agus is cinnte gur tharla imirce mhór d’ár muintir dá bharr, caithfear a rá go raibh claonadh againn, mar náisiún, leis an imirce riamh.
[As is often stated, emigration has, historically, been a defining characteristic of the Irish people. While some scholars often focus on the large numbers who left Ireland during and following the dark days of the Famine, and it is true that it represented a mass exodus of our people from these shores, over the generations new streams of emigration emerged and, whether by choice or through necessity, generations of Irish people have left this island and sought to start new lives in distant lands.]
These movements of people from their localities of origin are what has given us, the Irish abroad, our diaspora. Figures vary with many estimating up to approximately 70 million people throughout the world claiming some Irish heritage. The history of the different waves of migration from this island is one that is incredibly varied and rich in yield for those who study it. This legacy provides a unique opportunity today for Ireland’s global engagement with the world through the links of our diaspora and their introduction of the Ireland of today to the countries to which our people have moved.
In recent years, as a result of the challenging economic situation in Ireland there has once again been a considerable increase in the number of emigrants leaving Ireland, particularly from amongst the younger generation. Although the numbers leaving are now reducing, for many the most recent increase in emigration from Ireland was a surprising and unwelcome return to a phenomenon of old. Providing opportunities for a highly educated and motivated new young generation remains our greatest challenge.
While many of those who have left in recent times have gone to destinations which have a long legacy of Irish migration, such as the UK, US and Australia, increasingly our emigrants are moving to non-traditional destinations that include the Middle East and Asia. Indeed I am delighted that there is representation at the Civic Forum from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as you will undoubtedly have particularly unique perspectives to share, and perhaps also much to hear from those organisations working with older and more established Irish diaspora communities.
In addition to the new destinations for our migrants, the nature of emigration has also changed over the generations. In previous centuries, and decades not so long ago, there were very many thousands of young Irishmen and women from villages and parishes throughout Ireland, who left home for distant shores in search of a better life for themselves and their children and they were not able, did not have the technology as many emigrants have today, to simply pick up their mobile phone to call home. In my youth I recall the letters and parcels from emigrants in the US arriving to neighbours. This oft-read correspondence was often the only link across the Atlantic to family members who had departed.
Advances in modern technology mean that for those with the necessary skills Sydney or Dubai are no more than a click away. While this has untold advantages – allowing grandparents to see and interact with their grandchildren, facilitating instantaneous conversations across many thousands of miles – it nonetheless remains the case that emigration can often be a painful experience, that home is where the emigrant’s heart often lies. Telecommunications may have altered the experience of migration but it has not negated the importance of emigrant groups, such as those represented here, or their capacity to provide the human solidarity of a ‘home from home’. Indeed modern communication tools can sometimes increase the sense of loneliness and isolation as the lives of loved ones are gazed at from afar.
Emigration is, at its root, an experience that is both intensely personal and, at the same time, social. While the successive departure of Irish emigrants to such distant locations left indelible gaps in families and communities throughout Ireland and deprived our island of their talents, it is a testament to the enduring spirit of those Irish that emigrated that many of our emigrants thrived in their new countries of residence. For many the experience was, and is, an immensely enriching one filled with exposure to new cultures and peoples, and with innovative opportunities to develop their talents. Often grappling with new cultures, new languages and unimagined challenges, they succeeded in developing new lives for themselves and their families.
For others the experience was, and is, more challenging. The distance from friends and family and from familiar social supports can be difficult for some of our emigrants. For those Irish in particular, we have a special responsibility to reach out and embrace them as part of our community and of our shared Irish identity. It is your organisations who do that invaluable and essential work on behalf of us all, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to thank you for that work of solidarity.
The desire to remember and celebrate the contribution of our diaspora underpins also the Presidential Award for Distinguished Service for the Irish Abroad. It enables us to recognise in a formal way the outstanding contribution made by those abroad to serving the State and its citizens. It also provides an opportunity for the State to honour the sacrifice, support and commitment to Ireland of the wider Irish Diaspora. Over the last three years I have presented this award to 30 recipients who have demonstrated a remarkable commitment to Ireland and the Irish people and I am delighted to see a number of them here this evening.
Then too, and it is so important, in recent years the State has been in a position to provide financial support to many of your groups. Over the 11 years of operation, the Emigrant Support Programme has provided over €125 million to organisations working with Irish communities abroad. With its focus on assisting the most vulnerable and marginalised in our communities abroad it represents a caring and humanitarian approach for which Irish people are known. It is also a tangible manifestation of the Irish State’s wish to sustain and enhance the lives of our global Irish family.
It is important, too, that we as a State continue to recognise and acknowledge the considerable debt that we owe to previous generations of Irish emigrants. The sacrifices made by past emigrants to ensure that families left in Ireland were afforded increased opportunities and prospects should never be forgotten. In many cases remittances from emigrants provided for educational opportunities for younger siblings and underpinned economic advancement in the Irish economy. I am keenly conscious too, and particularly as we prepare for the centenary of the founding moments of our independence, of the important role played by the Irish diaspora in supporting our fledgling State in its early days, often in the face of deep-seated anti-Irish prejudice.
During the Famine, for example, the London Times had, together with Punch and others, consistently developed a stereotypical version of the Irish as insatiable in their demands, ungrateful and disloyal. They supported the British government’s interpretation of famine response and policy that saw famine as a matter for local resolution or even providential in its cause. Yet the post famine exodus of men women and children created an ongoing memory of culpable neglect at best, and more usually, an abiding communal recall of the consequences of imperial degradation, a response that would now live on beyond the seas. The Times itself recognised this at the time by speculating that this folk memory retained by the Irish migrants who were now becoming a powerful block in the most powerful nation on earth would pose a grave threat to Britain in the future, and so it proved to be.
Thus, as we begin our preparations for the commemoration of 1916 next year it is important to recall the central importance of the Irish overseas in the State’s first steps to independence, with many playing a central role in the planning, execution and aftermath of the Rising. At many points in Irish history, it was our diaspora that sustained the independence movement, they offered shelter to its leaders and they ensured that the Irish nation became recognised and acknowledged at the international level. Just as it was also American scholars and institutions of learning that collated and maintained many essential archives of our language and culture during the most difficult periods of the 19th century. For example, next week I will be in Skibbereen to mark the centenary of the death of O’Donovan Rossa, who died in the US and at whose funeral Pádraig Pearse made clear his revolutionary intent.
Next year’s centenary will be an opportunity for all of us to engage with the unique developments leading up to and following the events of 1916. People of all ages, in Ireland and overseas, will have the opportunity to both commemorate the past and reflect on the future direction of our country. An important part of commemoration will be a Global and Diaspora Programme, supported by the Embassy network all around the world, which will invite all those with an interest in Ireland to play their part in this important centenary. I hope that you will all be able to encourage the communities with whom you work to join in this celebration of our independence.
Mar fhocal scoir, is mian liom arís mo bhuíochas ó chroí a ghabháil libh as ucht na hoibre go léir a bhíonn ar siúl agaibh, lá i ndiaidh lae, chun tacaíocht, comhairle agus lámh chúnta a thabhairt d’ár ndeoraithe thar lear.
[In conclusion I would like to once again thank you for the valuable work which you undertake on a daily basis to support, advise and promote the cause of our emigrants abroad.]
The global Irish family is a unique and extraordinary body of people which I deeply value. I hope that the discussions you are having over these two days are informative and enriching and one of the fruits of these deliberations will be increased links with other organisations working with Irish communities throughout the world.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.