President Barack Obama, in his first words in Ireland, highlighted
the inspiring the progress made in Northern Ireland.
“It speaks to the
possibilities of peace and people in longstanding struggles being able
to re-imagine their relationships,” he said.
He spoke of the Queen’s visit to Ireland and the mutual warmth and
healing.
“That sends a signal not just in England, not just here in
Ireland but around the world. It sends, what Bobby Kennedy once called,
a ripple of hope that may manifest itself in a whole range of ways,” he
said at Farmleigh House in Dublin where he had a meeting with the
Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.
He also expressed appreciation to Ireland for all the work it does
internationally in peacekeeping, world food security and offering strong
voice on human rights stating. “Ireland punches above its weight.”
His main speech was in College Green, near Trinity College in Dublin
where a crowd estimated at 25,000 had gathered.
There he spoke movingly
of his great-great-great-grandfather Fulmouth Kearney, “who left
Ireland during the Great Hunger (1850), as so many Irish did, to seek a
new life in the new world and travelled by ship to New York.”
“When people like Fulmouth boarded those ships they often did so with
no family, no friends, and no money, nothing to sustain them but
faith. Faith in the all-mighty, faith in the idea of America, faith
that it was a place you could be prosperous, you could be free, you
could think and talk and worship as you please, a place where you could
make it if you tried,” he said.
“And as they worked and struggled and sacrificed and sometimes
experienced great discrimination to build that better life for the next
generation, they passed on that faith to their children and their
children’s children. An inheritance that their
great-great-great-grandchildren still carry with them.”
In introducing the President of America, Taoiseach Enda Kenny stated
that the visit of Queen Elizabeth last week was the completion of one
circle, and continued, “Today, with President Obama, we draw another
circle, one in which we tell the world of our unique, untouchable
wealth, wealth that cannot be accumulated in banks or measured by the
markets or traded on the stock exchange because it remains intact and
alive, deep inside our people, in the heart-stopping beauty of our
country and in the transforming currency of the Irish heart, imagination
and soul.”
President Obama also spoke of Ireland’s economic crisis, stating,
"We're people, the Irish and Americans, who never stop imagining a
brighter future, even in bitter times. We're people who make that
future happen through hard work, and through sacrifice, through
investing in those things that matter most, like family and community.”
The President ended his address with his election catchphrase,
“Ireland, if anyone ever says otherwise, if anybody ever tells you that
your problems are too big, or your challenges are too great, that we
can't do something, that we shouldn't even try, think about all that
we've done together. Remember that whatever hardships the winter may
bring, springtime is always just around the corner. And if they keep on
arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed,: Is féidir linn.
Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Is féidir linn.”
The American President began his one-day visit to Ireland with the
President Mary McAleese, before travelling to Farmleigh House.
Later in
his ancestral hometown of Moneygall it was very much a family occasion
where the President and Michelle shook hands with everyone and visited
the site of President Obama’s ancestral home, before meeting family
members and sipping a pint of Guinness.
Mr Obama's roots were uncovered by Canon Stephen Neill, a Church of
Ireland rector, who found baptismal and marriage records in the house of
a late parishioner, Elizabeth Short.
The President was able to see the
actual records of his family who were members of the Church of Ireland,
and meet Canon Neill.
Going further back in the family tree it has been discovered that one
branch of the family did extremely well; Michael Kearney, (Obama's 6th
great-granduncle) was involved in the Dublin city politics of the day
and John Kearney, another distant cousin of Obama's, went on to become
the Provost of Trinity College Dublin and later Bishop of Ossory (Church
of Ireland).