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Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny: May I begin by thanking the
people of Ireland for their extraordinary warmth and dignity
and generosity over the last seven days.
Thank you, people of Ireland.
(applause)
Now, if there's anyone out there who still doubts that
Ireland is a place where all things are possible,
who still wonders if the dream of our ancestors is alive in our
time, who still questions our capacity to restore ourselves,
to reinvent ourselves, and to prosper, well,
today is your answer.
(crowd cheering)
Because today, on this day, the President of the United States,
Barack Obama, and his first lady, Michele Obama,
come to visit!
(crowd cheering)
♪♪
Welcome, Mr. President, and Michele.
We're sure that he believes in Ireland.
(crowd cheering)
To make that precious connection with his Irish family,
his Irish roots, as thousands before him have done, today,
the 44th American President comes home!
(crowd cheering)
When Falmouth Kearney started out on his long Atlantic
crossing, he might have dreamed but hardly
imagined that one day, his great-great-great-grandson
would return as the President of the United States.
(crowd cheering)
That boy said good-bye to a ravaged island.
Millions had died or were leaving,
packing their hopes and their dreams in beside the remnants of
a life, stepping on to ships which, for some,
was like stepping into space.
Every one of them and all their people are our people on
(inaudible)
Their past is our past.
Their story is our story.
So this evening, my call is directly to those
40 million Irish Americans.
And whether you're listening and watching in New York or
New Haven or in San Diego or St. Louis,
whether you're Irish by blood or by marriage or by desire,
we, your Irish family are right here!
(crowd cheering)
We, your family, your Irish family, are right here,
to welcome you, to follow your President home!
Last week -- last week, Queen Elizabeth came to our
shores and bowed to our dead.
The Irish harp glittered above the heart of the English Queen.
With pride and happiness and two words of Irish,
we closed a circle of our history --
(speaking Irish Gaelic)
(crowd cheering)
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 of our people,
in the heart stomping beauty of our country and in
the transforming currency of the Irish heart,
imagination, and sole.
It's like the spirit of Leinster last Saturday in Cardiff.
Never give up!
Never give up!
And never say die!
This is what we call our
(speaking Irish Gaelic)
It has sustained us over centuries.
We pass it from mother to daughter, from father to son,
in our dreams and in our imagining,
in our love for our country and in our pride of who we are,
longing to what must be and what will be a brighter
and more prosperous future.
The President and his first lady are an extraordinary couple.
President Obama --
(crowd cheering)
--is part of that proud past and part of that proud future.
(crowd chanting, Obama! Obama!)
In 1963, the 45th President of the United States
stirred our hearts.
In 1995, the 42nd President lifted our country's spirits.
But the 44th President is different --
(crowd cheering)
-- because, ladies and gentlemen,
he doesn't just speak about the American dream,
he is the American dream!
(crowd cheering)
And that is the American dream come home!
So, ladies and gentlemen,
(speaking Irish Gaelic)
let your voices be heard around the globe as I am honored to
introduce the President of the United States,
Barack Obama and his first lady, Michele Obama.
Let's hear it!
(crowd cheering)
The President: Thank you!
(applause)
Hello, Dublin!
(applause)
Hello, Ireland!
(applause)
My name is Barack Obama --
(applause)
--of the Moneygall Obamas.
(applause)
And I've come home to find the apostrophe that we lost
somewhere along the way.
(laughter and applause)
Audience Member: I've got it here!
The President: Is that where it is?
(laughter)
Some wise Irish man or woman once said that broken Irish is
better than clever English.
(applause)
So here goes: Tá áthas orm bheith in Éirinn --I am happy to
be in Ireland!
(applause)
I'm happy to be with so many á cairde.
(applause)
I want to thank my extraordinary hosts --first of all,
Taoiseach Kenny --
(applause)
--his lovely wife, Fionnuala--
(applause)
--President McAleese and her husband, Martin --
(applause)
--for welcoming me earlier today.
Thank you, Lord Mayor Gerry Breen and the Gardai for
allowing me to crash this celebration.
(applause)
Let me also express my condolences on the recent
passing of former Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald--
(applause)
--someone who believed in the power of education,
someone who believed in the potential of youth, most of all,
someone who believed in the potential of peace and who lived
to see that peace realized.
And most of all, thank you to the citizens of Dublin and the
people of Ireland for the warm and generous hospitality you've
shown me and Michelle.
(applause)
It certainly feels like 100,000 welcomes.
(applause)
We feel very much at home.
I feel even more at home after that pint that I had.
(laughter)
Feel even warmer.
(laughter)
In return let me offer the hearty greetings of tens of
millions of Irish Americans who proudly trace their
heritage to this small island.
(applause)
They say hello.
Now, I knew that I had some roots across the Atlantic,
but until recently I could not unequivocally claim that I was
one of those Irish Americans.
But now if you believe the Corrigan Brothers,
there's no one more Irish than me.
(laughter and applause)
So I want to thank the genealogists who traced my
family tree.
Audience Member: --right here!
The President: Right here?
Thank you.
(applause)
It turns out that people take a lot of interest in you when
you're running for President.
(laughter)
They look into your past.
They check out your place of birth.
(laughter)
Things like that.
(laughter)
Now, I do wish somebody had provided me all this evidence
earlier because it would have come in handy back when
I was first running in my hometown of Chicago --
(applause)
--because Chicago is the Irish capital of the Midwest.
(applause)
A city where it was once said you could stand on 79th Street
and hear the brogue of every county in Ireland.
(applause)
So naturally a politician like me craved a slot in the
St. Patrick's Day parade.
The problem was not many people knew me or could
even pronounce my name.
I told them it was a Gaelic name.
They didn't believe me.
(laughter)
So one year a few volunteers and I did make it into the parade,
but we were literally the last marchers.
After two hours, finally it was our turn.
And while we rode the route and we smiled and we waved,
the city workers were right behind us
cleaning up the garbage.
(laughter)
It was a little depressing.
But I'll bet those parade organizers are watching TV today
and feeling kind of bad --
(applause)
--because this is a pretty good parade right here.
(applause)
Audience Member: Go Bulls!
The President: Go Bulls --I like that.
(laughter)
We got some Bulls fans here.
Now, of course, an American doesn't really require Irish
blood to understand that ours is a proud, enduring,
centuries-old relationship; that we are bound by history and
friendship and shared values.
And that's why I've come here today, as an American President,
to reaffirm those bonds of affection.
(applause)
Earlier today Michelle and I visited Moneygall where we saw
my ancestral home and dropped by the local pub.
(applause)
And we received a very warm welcome from all the people
there, including my long-lost eighth cousin, Henry.
(laughter)
Henry now is affectionately known as Henry VIII.
(laughter)
And it was remarkable to see the small town where a young
shoemaker named Falmouth Kearney,
my great-great-great grandfather,
my grandfather's grandfather, lived his early life.
And I was the shown the records from the parish
recording his birth.
And we saw the home where he lived.
And he left during the Great Hunger, as so many Irish did,
to seek a new life in the New World.
He traveled by ship to New York, where he entered himself into
the records as a laborer.
He married an American girl from Ohio.
They settled in the Midwest.
They started a family.
It's a familiar story because it's one lived and cherished by
Americans of all backgrounds.
It's integral to our national identity.
It's who we are, a nation of immigrants from
all around the world.
But standing there in Moneygall, I couldn't help but think how
heartbreaking it must have been for that great-great-great
grandfather of mine, and so many others, to part.
To watch Donegal coasts and *** cliffs recede.
To leave behind all they knew in hopes that something
better lay over the horizon.
When people like Falmouth boarded those ships,
they often did so with no family, no friends, no money,
nothing to sustain their journey but faith --faith in the
Almighty; faith in the idea of America;
faith that it was a place where you could be prosperous,
you could be free, you could think and talk and worship as
you pleased, a place where you could make it if you tried.
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 to their
children's children --an inheritance that their
great-great-great grandchildren like me still carry with them.
We call it the America Dream.
(applause)
It's the dream that Falmouth Kearney was attracted to
when he went to America.
It's the dream that drew my own father to America from
a small village in Africa.
It's a dream that we've carried forward --sometimes through
stormy waters, sometimes at great cost --for
more than two centuries.
And for my own sake, I'm grateful they made those
journeys because if they hadn't you'd be listening to
somebody else speak right now.
(laughter)
And for America's sake, we're grateful so many others from
this land took that chance, as well.
After all, never has a nation so small inspired
so much in another.
(applause)
Irish signatures are on our founding documents.
Irish blood was spilled on our battlefields.
Irish sweat built our great cities.
Our spirit is eternally refreshed by Irish story and
Irish song; our public life by the humor and heart and
dedication of servants with names like Kennedy and Reagan,
O'Neill and Moynihan.
So you could say there's always been a little green
behind the red, white and blue.
(applause)
When the father of our country, George Washington,
needed an army, it was the fierce fighting of your sons
that caused the British official to lament,
"We have lost America through the Irish."
(applause)
And as George Washington said himself,
"When our friendless standards were first unfurled,
who were the strangers who first mustered around our staff?
And when it reeled in the light, who more brilliantly sustained
it than Erin's generous sons?"
When we strove to blot out the stain of slavery and advance the
rights of man, we found common cause with your
struggles against oppression.
Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and our great
abolitionist, forged an unlikely friendship right here in
Dublin with your great liberator, Daniel O'Connell.
(applause)
His time here, Frederick Douglass said,
defined him not as a color but as a man.
And it strengthened the non-violent campaign he would
return home to wage.
Recently, some of their descendents met here in Dublin
to commemorate and continue that friendship
between Douglass and O'Connell.
When Abraham Lincoln struggled to preserve our young union,
more than 100,000 Irish and Irish Americans joined the
cause, with units like the Irish Brigade charging into battle
green flags with gold harp waving alongside our
star-spangled banner.
When depression gripped America, Ireland sent tens of thousands
of packages of shamrocks to cheer up its countrymen, saying,
"May the message of Erin shamrocks bring
joy to those away."
And when an Iron Curtain fell across this continent and our
way of life was challenged, it was our first Irish President
--our first Catholic President, John F.
Kennedy, who made us believe 50 years ago this week --
(applause)
--that mankind could do something big and bold and
ambitious as walk on the moon.
He made us dream again.
That is the story of America and Ireland.
That's the tale of our brawn and our blood, side by side,
in making and remaking a nation, pulling it westward,
pulling it skyward, moving it forward
again and again and again.
And that is our task again today.
I think we all realize that both of our nations have faced great
trials in recent years, including recessions so severe
that many of our people are still trying
to fight their way out.
And naturally our concern turns to our families,
our friends and our neighbors.
And some in this enormous audience are thinking about
their own prospects and their own futures.
Those of us who are parents wonder what it will mean for our
children and young people like so many who are here today.
Will you see the same progress we've seen
since we were your age?
Will you inherit futures as big and as bright as
the ones that we inherited?
Will your dreams remain alive in our time?
This nation has faced those questions before: When
your land couldn't feed those who tilled it;
when the boats leaving these shores held some of your
brightest minds; when brother fought against brother.
Yours is a history frequently marked by the greatest of trials
and the deepest of sorrow.
But yours is also a history of proud and defiant endurance.
Of a nation that kept alive the flame of knowledge in dark ages;
that overcame occupation and outlived fallow fields;
that triumphed over its Troubles -- of a resilient people who
beat all the odds.
(applause)
And, Ireland, as trying as these times are,
I know our future is still as big and as bright as our
children expect it to be.
(applause)
I know that because I know it is precisely in times like these --
in times of great challenge, in times of great change -- when we
remember who we truly are.
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.
We remember, in the words made famous by one of your
greatest poets that "in dreams begins responsibility."
This is a nation that met that responsibility by choosing,
like your ancestors did, to keep alight the flame of knowledge
and invest in a world-class education for your young people.
And today, Ireland's youth, and those who've come back to build
a new Ireland, are now among the best-educated,
most entrepreneurial in the world.
And I see those young people here today.
And I know that Ireland will succeed.
(applause)
This is a nation that met its responsibilities by choosing to
apply the lessons of your own past to assume a heavier
burden of responsibility on the world stage.
And today, a people who once knew the pain of an empty
stomach now feed those who hunger abroad.
Ireland is working hand in hand with the United States to make
sure that hungry mouths are fed around the world--
because we remember those times.
We know what crippling poverty can be like,
and we want to make sure we're helping others.
You're a people who modernized and can now stand up
for those who can't yet stand up for themselves.
And this is a nation that met its responsibilities and
inspired the entire world -- by choosing to see past the scars
of violence and mistrust to forge a lasting
peace on this island.
When President Clinton said on this very spot 15 years ago,
waging peace is risky, I think those who were involved
understood the risks they were taking.
But you, the Irish people, persevered.
And you cast your votes and you made your
voices heard for that peace.
(applause)
And you responded heroically when it was challenged.
And you did it because, as President McAleese has written,
"For all the apparent intractability of our problems,
the irrepressible human impulse to love kept nagging and
nudging us towards reconciliation."
Whenever peace is challenged, you will have to sustain
that irrepressible impulse.
And America will stand by you --always.
(applause)
America will stand by you always in your pursuit of peace.
(applause)
And, Ireland, you need to understand that you've already
so surpassed the world's highest hopes that what was notable
about the Northern Ireland elections two weeks ago was that
they came and went without much attention.
It's not because the world has forgotten.
It's because this once unlikely dream has become that most
extraordinary thing of things: It has become real.
A dream has turned to reality because of the
work of this nation.
(applause)
In dreams begin responsibility.
And embracing that responsibility,
working toward it, overcoming the cynics and the naysayers and
those who say "you can't"-- that's what makes dreams real.
That's what Falmouth Kearney did when he got on that boat,
and that's what so many generations of Irish men and
women have done here in this spectacular country.
That is something we can point to and show our children,
Irish and American alike.
That is something we can teach them as they grow up
together in a new century, side by side, as it has
been since our beginnings.
This little country, that inspires the biggest things--
your best days are still ahead.
(applause)
Our greatest triumphs-- in America and Ireland alike--
are still to come.
And, 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.
(applause)
For all you've contributed to the character of the United
States of America and the spirit of the world, thank you.
And may God bless the eternal friendship between
our two great nations.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you, Dublin.
Thank you, Ireland.