I live in Pearl River, where the St. Patrick’s Day parade is a very big deal. About one in nine people in this district have Irish roots, and I’m one of them. I’m Irish-Italian and Catholic, and I’ve been an AOH member in Rockland County for years. When people ask why a congressman from the Hudson Valley spends time on Northern Ireland, that’s the answer.
The Good Friday Agreement turned 28 in April, and most of it has held up. What never got finished is the families. Thousands of people buried somebody during the Troubles, and a lot of them are still waiting, some for 50 years now, to find out who did it and why.
Then in 2023 the British government passed the Legacy Act. It ended inquests and civil cases over killings from the Troubles, and it offered immunity to people who cooperated with a new commission. It took effect on May 1, 2024, and more than 1,100 families had their cases shut down that day. Damian Brown’s grandfather Sean was murdered in 1997. Damian said, “We invested our full faith in the inquest process.” Every major party in Northern Ireland opposed the law. If you know anything about politics over there, you know that almost never happens.
So what did we do about it? In December 2023, Brian Fitzpatrick, Betty McCollum and I wrote to Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin in Dublin. Two Republicans and a Democrat. We called the Act what it was, a law “providing amnesty for murder.” We asked them to “strongly consider taking this case to the European Court of Human Rights,” and told them we’d be there “should you take this next step.” Later that month Dublin announced it was going to court, and I backed them. DETERMINED: Bridie Brown (87) and family arrive at the Court of Appeal in Belfast with portraits of their murdered husband and father
Did it matter? I think it did. To be fair, the Labour government that took over in London in 2024 had already promised to scrap the Act. But Dublin kept the pressure on, and so did Ireland’s friends in Washington. In September 2025 the two governments agreed on a joint framework to replace it. Under that deal the immunity scheme goes away, and inquests and civil cases can start up again. London has a bill in Parliament now to make it law.
It isn’t law yet. The bill still has to pass, and it has to be carried out in good faith. Dublin has its own legacy bill to finish, too. Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland Secretary, told the Commons the families “ultimately will be the judge” of whether it gives them “the answers that they have sought for so long.” I agree with him. I’ll keep raising it in Washington until the families say it’s working.
Today a young nurse or electrician from Cork has a miserable time getting here legally. Meanwhile, Australia gets 10,500 E-3 work visas a year, and thousands of them go unused. So I wrote the Advancing Opportunity for Hibernians Act. Yes, the AOH Act, on purpose. It would let qualified Irish nationals use those leftover visas to build a better future for themselves.
A lot of the Irish families I represent were cops, firefighters, nurses or teachers, and now they’re retired on public pensions. For decades, two federal rules, the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, took a chunk out of the Social Security they’d earned. I cosponsored the Social Security Fairness Act to get rid of both, and it became law in January 2025. ON THE MARCH: Mike Lawler
They also pay some of the highest property taxes in America, here in Rockland and Westchester, and that $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction clobbered them. I had to fight my own party’s leadership on it, and in the end we got the cap raised to $40,000 for households making under $500,000. In 2025 the World Trade Center Health Program got hit with cuts. I pushed back, and they were reversed. An awful lot of the people at Ground Zero were Irish. They were promised that care.
A lot of what my office does never makes the paper. A retiree’s Social Security check stops coming. Somebody needs a passport by Thursday because there’s a funeral in Mayo. We’ve closed more than 6,000 cases like that since I took office and gotten back more than $27 million for people in this district. That’s their money.
The Good Friday Agreement left the island’s future up to the people of Ireland, North and South, by consent. Presidents of both parties have backed it since 1998. I’ve done my part in Congress, and I want to keep doing it. I’m asking for your vote on November 3.
Mike Lawler represents New York's 17th Congressional District.
