National Famine Commemoration Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna, Co. Galway Sunday, 17 May 2026

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A dhaoine uaisle -

Tá dán álainn dar teideal 'I bPort Omna Dom' a scríobh an Corcaíoch - Séamus Ó hAodha - a chuir, i mo thuairim, Port Omna ar an léirscáil liteartha.

Ach tá clú agus cáil faoi leith ar cheann dá dhánta eile - Speal an Ghorta - the scythe of famine - ina ndéanann sé caoineadh ar mhilleadh an Ghorta Mhóir ar ár muintir.

Tá macalla an Ghorta Mhóir fite fuaite i dtraidisiún ceoil, liteartha agus filíochta na hÉireann: eachtra chomh tubaisteach a bhí inti gur scrios sí saol agus teaghlaigh ár sinsear sa chaoi go bhfuil na cuntais chomhaimseartha ró-amh, ró-lom agus ró-cráite dár gcluasa inniu.

Caitheann an ré dhorcha sin a scáth dodhearmadta go domhain inár gcroíthe, ár meonta agus inár gcuimhne chomhchoiteann. Ar an ábhar sin is cúis mhór onóra dom an Gorta Mór a chomóradh libh i bhfoirgneamh stairiúil a raibh dlúthbhaint aige le faoiseamh a thabhairt dá íospartaigh.

In the recorded history our island there is no more traumatic event than the Great Famine.

Its destructive intensity brought a scale of death and dispossession which is almost impossible to comprehend. After the worst was over, nothing would ever be the same again.

We became a nation where emigration touched every family. To be Irish now meant to have deep connections thousands of miles away.

A relentless determination not to face the same helplessness became a defining Irish characteristic. It was not just politically radicalising; it changed the very fabric of our society and identity.

So, it is important that we take time to gather and to reflect - to solemnly remember and to seek understanding.

It is not the role of this or any generation to keep alive resentments for events far in the past. Yet it is our duty to keep alive even the most difficult memories. As the great American poet Maya Angelou said,

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

The National Famine Commemoration is one of the most important state commemorative events we have. It is unique in that it is not focused on an individual or groups.

It is commemoration of an entire society and the loss of so many whose names are not recorded on monuments.

We are all aware of the statistics - one million dead- one million souls extinguished. More than a million more lost to emigration.

It was not some small provincial event, it is in fact the worst famine recorded in the last 400 years of the history of Western Europe.

The two decades before the Famine were marked by a new spirit of hope and determination by the Irish people.

The campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and Repeal saw the birth of the world's first mass democratic movements. The defeat of Repeal did not negate the fact that there was powerful sense that progress would come.

This was all to be crushed by first the blight and then the famine.

Nowhere suffered greater mortality than here in Connacht during the years 1846-51. The census of 1841 and 1851 recorded a population drop of nearly half a million people, a third of its inhabitants - with all evidence showing that this loss was concentrated in the Famine years.

There is not really any serious doubt about why the Famine was allowed to claim so many victims. Neglect, a colonial mindset and cruel ideologies combined to allow a tragedy to develop which was constantly reported in Britain and around the world.

A gesture such as that of the Choctaw Nation in sending a donation for the relief of the Irish is one small yet significant demonstration of the fact that this was not a famine hidden behind a veil of silence.

As the Famine started, people steadily kept coming to the workhouses as the harvest failed, as they starved and as they were evicted by their landlords.

By the end of 1846, all workhouses in Galway were full, squalid and perfect sites for diseases like cholera and typhus which feasted on the already weakened residents. By 1847, over a hundred thousand people were receiving what was termed 'outdoor relief'.

Anyone reading the brochure today will be struck by two things when we look at relief. The inadequacy of the response of the Westminster governments of the time and conversely, the charity and generosity of countless peoples around the globe who poured money into Ireland and played the significant role in ensuring the disaster was not even worse.

But fundamentally, the Famine did not end as a result of a successful campaign of management and relief. It ended when the blight disappeared by another chance of nature.

And in that time, there was little in the government's response or the response of the landowners that showed either an understanding of, or empathy for the crisis.

From Peel's Brimstone to the cessation of the Soup Kitchen Act, from the workhouse to outdoor relief, from the reliance on in the inadequate Poor Law unions and the refusal to stop exports of grain and livestock. From Peel to Russell, the governmental response was one of, to borrow Cormac Ó Gráda's term, 'doctrinaire neglect.'

But against all of this we can contrast the spirit of charity demonstrated by so many friends of Ireland, in Britain, in America, and around the world.

I would draw your attention to Marie Mannion's piece on the Quaker response in Galway to get some sense of the scale of what they did.

It was pressure from groups such as the Quakers that continually pushed Westminster to provide better relief, and it was their reports and observations that informed them on what shape this should take. Nor do we forget that when their government failed, the British people stepped up.

Britain was the single largest source of overseas donations to Irish Famine relief and the British Relief Association, founded on the initiative of Lionel de Rotschild in 1847 who was the single largest donor.

This spirit of charity and giving persists today in our cultural memory. I see echoes of it everywhere in Irish society.

On the international level, where Irish aid continuously looks to eradicate hunger elsewhere in the world. And I see it on a local level.

I see it here today in the Irish Workhouse Centre whose team of volunteers do an incredible job in establishing such a wonderful resource for the community, for the nation and the world beyond.

Solidarity with others is moral imperative made more powerful when you remember the Famine.

One of Daniel O'Connell's earliest speeches as an MP was a powerful demand for a response to a growing famine in India.

He said that it was our duty to care for others even when in a far-away land. It is especially moving that his final speeches before his death in 1847, involved him raising his fading voice in a plea for help for those starving in Ireland.

One of the most important insights into why so many died comes from the work of the renowned economist and Nobel winner Amartya Sen.

He studied the history of subsistence crises and when they became famines. Having assessed hundreds of years of evidence he said that there is no recorded famine in any state which honoured the values of liberal democracy.

A state which views its people as citizens, which seeks to promote the common good, which has an open and free media - these are the greatest weapons against Famine because such states can never stand by when mass starvation is threatened.

The most recent famine in Europe was the Holodomor in Ukraine in the 1930s.

Millions died as the direct result of the policies of the Soviet Union. Less than a hundred years later, the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to Russian aggression is strengthened by the memory of the trauma of the famine.

When we look at the modern world, we should understand that there is no such thing as an unavoidable famine. At all times and in every circumstance, they result for the action and inaction of others.

In Sudan and in Gaza we are seeing mass hunger because of conflict and disregard for basic humanitarian values.

Remembering, commemorating, and grieving are profound acts. We take all of those who died and suffered and take them into ourselves and our own memory.

We recognize all lives touched by the Famine, all those who died in such tragic preventable circumstances, those who survived but only lived half-lives burdened by grief and those who left but never forgot their homeland.

We take all these lives, each a tragedy in its own way, and hold them in our hearts. We take lessons from them and in their lessons and in their memory, they live a little again within the Irish of today.

We remember when the world saw our Famine and responded with relief, and so we as a nation see the same hunger and suffering in other countries, we too respond with help, with aid, with comfort.

We are all born of the strength of previous generations. It is my profound honour as Taoiseach, as head of the government of an independent Irish state, to pay respects to every soul lost to Ireland in the Famine.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh siad.

ENDS