Obama, Kenny remarks at White House ceremony

[caption id="attachment_70569" align="alignright" width="600" caption="That shamrock moment. "]

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This is an edited version of remarks by President Barack Obama and Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the White House St. Patrick's Day reception held on Tuesday of last week.

PRESIDENT OBAMA

As you may have noticed, today is not, in fact, St. Patrick's Day. We just wanted to prove that America considers Ireland a dear and steadfast friend every day of the year. Some of you may have noticed we even brought the cherry blossoms out early for our Irish and Northern Irish visitors. And we will be sure to plant these beautiful shamrocks right away.

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I want to welcome back my good friend, Taoiseach Kenny, his extraordinary wife, Fionnuala. This has been our third working visit in just over a year, and each one has been better than the last.

I've had the pleasure to welcome back First Minister Peter Robinson, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Northern Ireland, as well.

And, everyone, please welcome my new friends from Moneygall, my long-lost cousin, Henry. His mother, Mary, is here as well. And my favorite pub keeper, Ollie Hayes, is here with his beautiful wife. He was interested in hiring Michelle when she was pouring a pint. I said, she's too busy - maybe at the end of our second term.

In return, I did take them out for a pint at the Dubliner here in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

Now, while there are too many Irish Americans to acknowledge by name here tonight, I do want to thank (Maryland governor) Martin O'Malley and his band for rocking the White House for the evening. It's said that the curse of the Irish, as the governor must know, is not that they don't know the words to a song - it's that they know them all.

As you may know, I finally got to spend a day in Ireland with Michelle last May. I visited my ancestral village of Moneygall, saw my great, great, great grandfather's house. I had the distinct honor of addressing the Irish people from College Green in Dublin. And when it comes to their famous reputation for hospitality and good cheer, the Irish outdid themselves. Michelle and I received absolutely the warmest of welcomes, and I've been trying to return the favor as best I can.

There really was something magical about the whole day, and I know that I'm not the only person who feels that way when they visit Ireland. Even my most famously Irish American predecessor was surprised about how deeply Ireland affected him when he visited in his third year as president. "It is strange," President Kennedy said on his last day in Ireland, "that so many years and so many generations pass, and still some of us who come on this trip could feel ourselves among neighbors, even though we are separated by generations, by time and by thousands of miles."

I know most of you can relate to that. I think anyone who's had a chance to visit can relate. And that's why Jackie Kennedy later visited Ireland with her children and gave one of President Kennedy's dog tags to his cousins in Dunganstown. And that's why I felt so at home when I visited Moneygall.

Because for all the remarkable things the Irish have done in the course of human history, keeping alive the flame of knowledge in dark ages, outlasting a great hunger, forging a peace that once seemed impossible, the green strands they have woven into America's heart - from their tiniest villages through our greatest cities - is something truly unique on the world stage.

And these strands of affection will never fray, nor will they come undone. While those times and the troubles of later generations were far graver than anything we could fathom today, many of our people are still fighting to get back on solid ground after several challenging years.

But we choose to rise to these times for the same reason we rose to those tougher times: Because we are all proud peoples who share more than sprawling family trees. We are peoples who share an unshakeable faith, an unbending commitment to our fellow man, and a resilient and audacious hope. And that's why I say of Ireland tonight what I said in Dublin last May, this little country that inspires the biggest things, its best days are still ahead.

Tonight, grateful for our shared past and hopeful for our common future, I give my word to you, Mr. Prime Minister, and to the people of Ireland: As long as I am president, you will have a strong friend, a steadfast ally, and a faithful partner in the United States of America.

RESPONSE FROM TAOISEACH

ENDA KENNY

Mr. President, Vice President Biden, Michelle, ladies and gentlemen, these have been an extraordinary few days in the relationships between Ireland and America. Thank you for your warm invitation and for this warm welcome.

Ireland actually picked the best time of year for its national celebration. It's the time of year when the earth turns at the spring equinox, and as they say, the sea spreads it far sun crop to the north.

As taoiseach, a year into this new government, I'm proud, indeed, to bring good news from home. Thanks to the courage and the resilience and the sacrifice of the Irish people, the Irish ship of state now faces in the right direction. Our economy is stabilizing. Our exports are thriving. Our international reputation is being restored. Ireland is building itself a better future.

Today, Mr. President, Ireland thanks America. We thank you for the centuries where you gave us shelter and refuge and opportunity, and above all, where you gave us hope.

In the Irish language, we have many phrases, one of them is "hope cures every misery." It was that miracle, hope, that brought millions of Irish people to your shores yearning for a better life. Not everybody survived that journey. It is said that 80,000 Irish souls were lost in the Atlantic, victims of long hunger, of fever and of destitution. Indeed, an ocean, a tide of lost ancestors, a bitter benediction of the waters dividing the old life and the new.

Well, tonight I remember them. We honor them here in this White House, designed by an Irish architect, and in our national hearts. Because they were the price of a new life. In the new country, in this new country of miraculous plenty, the survivors - among them, one Falmouth Kearney -- walked straight off those ships. But ironically, they never stopped looking back. Because our research shows that while their fellow arrivals saw emigration as an opportunity, for the Irish it was always a tragedy.

There were the dispossessed, their hearts, their minds in Ireland; their hopes and their futures in America, the least likely of any nation ever to return home. Which is why what makes the Irish and what they did for America all the more heroic, all the more remarkable, all the more noble.

Mr. President, today, the Irish people are heroes of our own story. Today, persistent and determined and proud, we answer your question of belief in ourselves, because we believe that our country and our nation will succeed.

When you came last May to that small, intimate homecoming in College Green just the two Obamas, half of the U.S. Secret Service, 100,000 enthralled Irish people, you, sir, the young president, stood in front of the old Irish House of Lords and you promised that you would stand by us. Well, sir, you and America have kept your word. For Ireland, your door has been and is always open. And for that we thank you.

And as a prominent reminder, and on your behalf of your historic homecoming, Mr. President, it is my honor to present to you, on behalf of the Irish people and of the government, this formal certificate of Irish heritage.

Next year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the homecoming of another one of our sons, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Next year, Ireland will gather her global family to herself in a year-long celebration of the ties of heart and hope and history that bind us and allow us to imagine together a better, brighter richer future. We call it simply "The Gathering."

These are our new departures of hope and confidence and success. And these are the new departures from which there will be no going back.

This evening, Mr. President, I bring our current emigrants to the heart of these celebrations here in the (speaks Irish) of the White House.

As you see, a light burns brightly within every one of these emigrants, and that's the light of opportunity, of ambition, and of confidence. But it is also the light of home. Especially in this week of St. Patrick, my message to their parents and their families is this: My work and that of my government, with your work and your government, is aimed at ensuring that these children, Ireland's children, can live and work at home if that is their intention and their desire.

Mr. President, like you, we believe that Ireland's best days are still up ahead. And like you, we believe that our greatest triumphs are still to come. When you came to Ireland, like your predecessor, President Kennedy, and President Clinton, you made us dream again. On these days of St. Patrick, we hope that you will be able to fulfill your promise to come home again in the springtime.

And now it's my privilege, on behalf of Ireland, to present President Obama with the traditional bowl of shamrock. May it bring him good luck in the time ahead.

 

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