Kenny connects with Irish heritage and emigrants

Sinéad Kilbane with Enda Kenny on Fifth Avenue, New York. An Taoiseach spotted Sinéad in the crowd as he marched in the New York St Patrick’s Day Parade.

Kenny connects with Irish heritage and emigrants


Áine Ryan
aineryan@mayonews.ie

WHEN Taoiseach Enda Kenny presented Michael Bloomberg with an ‘Emigrant’s Teapot’  at the mayoral breakfast in New York it was but one of the many gifts brought from his native  Mayo to mark the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. A symbolic reminder of the hundreds and thousands of Irish that helped to build New York and America, the ‘Emigrant’s Teapot’ was housed in the National Museum of Country Life, Castlebar, and is among 100 objects featured in a new e-book entitled ‘Ireland’s Gift to America’.
Mr Kenny also brought produce from Cafe Rua, in Castlebar, puddings and sausages from award-winning artisan butchers, Kelly’s of Newport, as well as crafts from Foxford Woollen Mills and Mayo Crystal as gifts for President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, who he will see today (Tuesday).
In a busy schedule that included a tour of the largely Irish Breezy Point, where Hurricane Sandy inflicted devastation, Mr Kenny attended Mass on Sunday morning at St Thomas More Church, where a sea of green-wearing parishioners welcomed him. Among one of the most Irish communities in the United States, Monsignor Michael Curran opened Mass by observing that ‘this is a community founded on hard work – the hard work of immigrants and especially the Irish’.
The previous day, Mr Kenny had joined tens of thousands of New Yorkers who lined Fifth Avenue for the 252nd St Patrick’s Day Parade. Walking alongside the United Irish Counties Group, the eagle-eyed Taoiseach spotted one Mayo native in the crowd and, naturally, had a quick natter with Sinéad Kilbane from Achill.
He then travelled to Washington yesterday (Monday) to deliver the Paul O’Dwyer Memorial Lecture at George Washington University as well as to attend meetings, alongside TΡnaiste Eamon Gilmore, with business and political leaders.
The highlight of Enda Kenny’s week-long visit to the United States will be today (Tuesday) when he meets the US president Barack Obama at the White House.
Meanwhile, Minister of State Michael Ring travelled to Italy for the conclusion to Ireland’s Six Nations rugby campaign and to watch the Irish Women’s rugby team claim their first ever Grand Slam.

Emigrant’s Teapot
A tin teapot, with a pouting lip soldered on to one side and the internal wall connected to the spout punctured with holes to make a strainer. Such vessels were made in Tuam by Mike Maughan, a tinker, who sold them to the many 19th century emigrants who brought tea with them for the long voyages on emigrant ships.

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