Speech by An Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald TD Kennedy Summer School “Ireland and the United States 1916 – 2016: A story of opportunity” 9 September 2016

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The relationship between Ireland and the United States during the last 100 years began as a story of patriots taking the opportunity to win the freedom of a nation, supported by their country men and women from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

-A story of Irish men and women who boarded ships and aeroplanes to seek opportunities and better lives in the United States.

-A story of an Ireland whose later prosperity was founded on the opportunities provided by American investment.

– And a story of a unique relationship forged between a global power and a small country.

I want to thank Governor O’Malley for his excellent paper on the extraordinary political career of John Devoy. Devoy was the only leading Fenian who lived to see Irish independence become a reality. The Irish Free State gave John Devoy a state funeral when he died in 1928. If you watch the old Pathe footage on YouTube you can see the funeral procession. Lining O’Connell Street, in the shadow of the statue of Daniel O’Connell, is a crowd of thousands. You have to wonder how many of them stayed in Ireland, and how many – like thousands before and after them – would look to the United States as the land of opportunity.

Historically our greatest export was our people. They made a major contribution to the physical and cultural fabric of the nations they landed in. For much of the last century, Irish people were building other nations because the opportunities did not exist in Ireland to allow them to stay to build this nation.

The Irish in America were a continual source of support and solace for Irish nationalists from the time of the Great Famine onwards. It was not just the Fenian tradition that looked to the US for support. Members of the Irish Parliamentary Party were also frequent visitors. Parnell had an American mother and the Party engaged in active fundraising among the Irish in the US in order to support their political work on Ireland’s behalf at Westminster. ?

One such parliamentarian who visited the US on behalf of the Irish Party was Tom Kettle. Kettle, who came from a strongly nationalist family, had been a brilliant student at school and university where James Joyce was one of his contemporaries. ?

Shortly after he became MP for East Tyrone in 1906, Kettle was sent to the US with another newly elected Irish Party MP. ??

When he entered parliament, he was widely viewed as a likely future leader of the Irish Party and of a Home Rule Ireland. However, he stepped down from parliament in 1910 in order to become an academic at UCD. He came back into the political limelight when he joined the leadership of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and was in Belgium purchasing arms for the Volunteers when the First World War broke out.

What he saw in Belgium convinced Kettle that the war against Germany deserved the support of the Irish people. He parted company with people like Pearse, Plunkett and McDonagh and joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The reason he is in our thoughts today is because he was killed at Ginchy on the Western Front on this day 100 years ago. ??

The fabric of today’s Ireland is woven from both the John Devoy and Tom Kettle strands.

Devoy represents the influence of Irish America on Ireland, an influence continues to this day, giving Ireland a unique relationship with the United States.

What we ultimately shared was a desire to build our own societies on our own terms – societies that would be fairer, more just and representative of all of the people within them.

It is also a relationship that has been defined by migration – fleeing from a famine, sons and daughters leaving to sustain families left behind, people seeking new opportunities where they seemed more plentiful.

Migration is both a story of human development and human desperation. Today, desperation, fear and misery are driving millions of people from their homes in search of safety and security. Countless men, women and children are dying in pursuit of those goals.

It is one of the greatest – if not the greatest – challenges facing the international community at this time.

This year alone in the Mediterranean region almost 300,000 have reached Europe. More than 3,000 people died in the attempt. Or at least 3,000 that we know of.

I have contributed to the European response at the European Justice and Home Affairs Ministers Council in our efforts to bring the current migration crisis under control. It is only in managing and regulating the situation by working together, that we can achieve the real and lasting development benefits of migration.

The sheer scale of this crisis is such that we desperately need a global response with co-operative global leadership, not unlike attempts to reduce global carbon emissions.

The United Nations has convened a high level meeting on 19 September which will be the culmination of several international initiatives in response to the global refugee and migrant crises.

President Obama will host a Leaders’ Summit the following day. I will represent Ireland at both gatherings.

This will be a unique opportunity to strengthen and implement existing frameworks and to develop innovative ways to address large movements of people.

The global response to this crisis will have to accommodate the people fleeing terror and war and, ultimately, work together to tackle the causes of the terror and wars in the Middle East and North Africa.

Walls, physical or metaphorical, cannot halt human nature, the desire for protection, safety and opportunity for people and the families. We know that from our own history.

We also know that the mythical predictions of biblical hordes swamping our nations is an attempt to feed the fear of people in both our countries. At the same time we must acknowledge that there are people in both our countries who feel left behind or on the margins.

A good state and relevant politics must always demand that the vulnerable are supported. We have failed to do this too many times in the past.

We also saw this sense of exclusion in the recent Brexit debate. We are seeing it in the US Presidential Campaign. And sometimes we see it at home too.

Creeping anti-globalisation sentiment is gaining traction. We must address this.

But Ireland, as a small open economy, has benefitted greatly from engagement with the wider world and particularly the United States. International economic cooperation presents a basis upon which to build not just new business relationships but to acquire new knowledge and perspectives. And new opportunities.

Innovation and creativity are contagious and the presence of multi-nationals here has led to the development of our own innovative, indigenous companies.

Ireland is open to the world. We make no apologies for that and we will vigorously defend the integrity of our tax system and our sovereign rights related to that system to ensure Ireland remains open to the world.

Opposing globalisation means opposing opportunity. Isolated economies lead to unhealthy societies. It is right to always question who benefits from globalisation and to expect that the state must be the ultimate guarantor of the people’s best interests.

We must not turn in on ourselves and squander the opportunity that economic recovery presents. This is an opportunity to define the kind of society we want to be.

Today we must, as set out in the Programme for Government, create a fair and compassionate society which people can feel part of and proud of, a society for everyone, at every stage of their lives.

The struggle for independence in Ireland and the United States was a struggle against exclusion. What emerged from both struggles was a set of strong values that defined how both societies should emerge and evolve. Through declaration and proclamation we laid out our vision for progress.

We know from this year’s 1916 commemorations how important the American influence was in bringing about the Easter Rising.

I was also reminded of other connections recently when I visited the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia while attending the Democratic Convention. That bell is believed to have rung on the 8th July 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was read in Philadelphia, four days after it was adopted by the Second Continental Congress. Three of the signatories, Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith were born in Ireland, men who believed that a free future could provide equal opportunities to all.

Equality of opportunity should define this country. It should be what we become known for and proud of. Providing equality of opportunity to everyone is how we can make this society just and fair.
A society without opportunity is unfair and unhealthy. The task now in this country is to use the proceeds of economic recovery to build a society that provides opportunities to all.

Equality of opportunity is based on the belief that there should be no barriers to people achieving their full potential. It is also one of the fundamental principles of the American dream.

Our economic history is long periods of austerity and want, punctuated by a few brief periods of success – and excess. We must build a sustainable economy that generates good jobs for good pay.

But the economy is not an end in itself. The economy must serve the people, not the other way around. The economy must help us build – in Roosevelt’s great phrase, “a society where nobody feels left out.”

Ultimately I would like to see us measure ourselves by our national wellbeing rather than our national income.

Returning to Tom Kettle, his legacy is also vital today. He was a convinced European, who wanted Ireland to be more European in its outlook. I think he would be pleased with today’s Ireland and the place we have established for ourselves in Europe. Our European commitments are fundamental to our future, as is our friendship with the United Kingdom.

After the UK leaves the EU, Ireland will be the largest English speaking member State and, with our strong affinities with the US, this will put us in a unique position in the vital trans-Atlantic context. This ought to please both John Devoy and Tom Kettle in just about equal measure.

However, there are challenges ahead. As the Minister with direct responsibility for security and the common travel area, a priority will be to prevent Brexit unravelling the things that underpinned the Good Friday Agreement.

Brexit must not interfere with the complex mosaic of relationships between the peoples of this island and the compromises that everyone had to accept to deal with those relationships.

Contacts between the administrations on these islands since Brexit have been characterised by a shared view about the desirability of maintaining to the greatest extent possible the current arrangements. I am confident too that our European partners will understand and respect the unique set of relationships between these islands.

All sides want to avoid physical border crossings and checkpoints. In the past, these were powerful symbols of division and primarily associated in the public mind with the 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Their disappearance over the years since the Good Friday Agreement has become the ultimate symbol of – and a powerful dividend from – the success of the peace process.

I accept Brexit means Brexit, but so does peace mean peace.

And I can assure you that in approaching the issues surrounding Brexit, the Government in which I serve will have no greater priority than nurturing and maintaining the hard-won peace on this island.
That hard-won peace was won with pivotal help from friends of all political persuasions in the United States. The role played by Bill Clinton in what became known as the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement is rightly renowned. But his successors to this day and various Secretaries of State – including, of course, Hilary Clinton – have played a very supportive role. And, of course, translating the fine words of the Agreement into the practical realities on the ground took years of work not all of which is concluded yet.

But the fact is that people in Northern Ireland now know a peace that has cast immeasurable benefits on the quality of their lives.

To achieve that peace through all the complexities, to accommodate aspirations that were on their face irreconcilable, involved a great many people keeping their eyes on the prize.

We have to be constantly vigilant. We have to be wary of anything that disturbs the delicate balance which that agreement represented.

Peace and a recovering economy are helping to bring our young people home, eager to contribute, eager to shape the future. They have experienced other nations and other ways of doing things. In the past those who left here rarely came back. Now, for the first time in our history we have the opportunity, over the coming years, to welcome home those who have left during the past decade and perhaps, instead of building other nations, we can finish the work of building our own.

Conclusion

Over the last 100 years, millions of Irish people have looked back at us from abroad with a kind of third eye.

Now we can confidently look to the future.

To engage and participate and choose the society we want to be.

Never have the conditions for opportunity been better. We have peace on this island, an economy that is recovering and talented people coming home.

What better time, therefore, for us to transform possibilities into opportunities.

I suspect that the story of the relationship between Ireland and America will be different over the next 100 years but I have no doubt our two countries will remain firm friends, forever connected.

Whatever the future holds, I have no doubt that if both countries keep striving to build better societies then the next 100 years will write another story about opportunities, about hopes and dreams and about achievements.