Irish Famine Memorial in Sydney Australia

Sceala Philosopher

Mary McAleese Address at the Irish Famine Memorial in Sydney Australia.

Address by Mary Mcaleese , President of Ireland, Launching the Monument Project on 2 September 1998 By Removing A Stone from the Wall
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Mary McAleese
This is a very special occasion, for to stand here in this hallowed place which witnessed so much personal tragedy, to recall the Great Irish Famine & all its harrowing anguish, is to remember a period which is at the very heart of modern Irish history. The Great Famine profoundly affected our consciousness & personality as a people & influenced the direction & destiny of the Irish people. It is worth remembering those times are not so far off as we would like to think.

My grandfather's mother was born during these years. He is only twenty years dead & he, like so many, carried inside him the fearsome grip of loss, despair & anger which characterised his generation. Our foremost Irish living poet Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney wrote the poignant lines: Stinking potatoes fouled the land pits turned pus into filthy mounds; and where potato diggers are you still smell the running sore. The experience of that harrowing time still lingers not alone in our folk memory but in the warp & weft of our thinking, feeling landscape. And yet it is so hard to accept & to comprehend how such devastation, hardship & suffering was caused by the shortage of food in a land which we know as the "Green Island", where as the poet said, "so much beauty meets nature".

But between 1845 & 1850 the potato was destroyed by blight, the green land turned hostile & the lives of the people of Ireland were fundamentally changed. Out of a population of almost 9 million people, over 1 million died from starvation & related diseases. A further million emigrated, many under appalling conditions, & many of those indeed died on the journey or soon after landing on the shores of distant lands that held out the promise of a better life in abundance & in freedom. My grandfather's cottage is now our holiday home, the little road leads past Ardcama graveyard [and] the ditch we travel past on our daily runs to shops was once lined nine-deep with bodies awaiting burial. So far & yet so near.

However we may debate the history of the times, the dominance of economic theory, the interpretation of political economy, the charges of administrative incompetence or the evidence of political blindness, these are the facts. There is no fiction in these chilling statistics. There is no dispute about orthodoxy. There is the simple fact that the Famine was a cathartic event in Irish history. A society was shattered. The most vulnerable members of its rural community were decimated. A people were robbed of hope, peace of mind & of each other. The Famine left an indelible mark on the consciousness of the Irish, while its aftermath, the memory of its frightening reality, would forge a fundamental reorientation in Irish consciousness.
Arial view of the monument

Beyond the shores of Ireland itself the Famine resulted in the formation of another Ireland, the global Irish family scattered across America, Australia, Canada & New Zealand & indeed Irish communities elsewhere. They built their lives, their communities, cherished their heritage & maintained their values. They brought those values with them & contributed them with generosity & openness to the countries of the New World. They never forgot the risks of vulnerability & marginalisation & whether it was in the world of politics or of education, in the Labour movement or in the marketplace, the Irish were to be at the forefront of those who championed the cause of social justice, the need for fairness in society, the politics & policies of brotherhood & of humanity.

They remembered their own loneliness, their lostness, their disconnectedness. They valued the hands of friendship which helped them build up the network of friends & community which sustains us humanly & in turn they reached out to the lonely newcomer, like them, coming to build anew, full of hope & full of dread. In remembering the victims of the Great Famine & their descendants we should not overlook the fact that it had particular consequences for the women of Ireland who were affected differently & often most tragically in the huge wave of emigration both during & following this awful time. The emigration of its women had a lasting impact in Ireland & made us unique in the Europe of that time when more women left our shores than from any other European country. Irish women were forced to break the most intimate ties of kinship & friendship as they left their families & their home to build their lives & a home for their loved ones in other distant parts of the world. We can only guess at the fortitude & courage needed to transcend aching loneliness, despair & heartache.

Between May 1848 & April 1850, according to the records of the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland, 4,114 orphan girls & young women, between the ages of fourteen & twenty, with the overwhelming majority between the ages of sixteen & eighteen, were dispatched from Union workhouses in every county of Ireland to the Australian ports of Sydney, Port Phillip [Melbourne] & Adelaide. Over half of the girls & young women were transported to Sydney. As history tells us, the scheme began with the arrival in Sydney from Belfast of the notorious Earl Grey in October 1848 carrying girls from Union workhouses across the North of Ireland. Fifty-six of the girls were from Belfast. The last ship to arrive, the Maria, entered Sydney Harbour on 1 August 1850.

But perhaps the most widely known is the Thomas Arbuthnot. I say most widely known because of the painstaking research of Richard Reid & Cheryl Mongan in their beautifully produced book, A Decent Set Of Girls. My own children are young teenagers far from ready yet to be self-reliant, still running to Mammy with hurts & cuts, still needing love & care to nurture them to independence & adulthood. Too many of those who came here never knew that love, that nurturing, but it is to their credit that they endured awesome hardships & became witnesses to the indomitable nature of the human spirit, the transcendence of love.
The memorial wall inset with books

Just as the Great Famine is at the heart of Irish history, the recent Good Friday Agreement [in Ireland] is at the core of our future. The Agreement is a balanced & fair settlement supported by the great majority of voters in Ireland. It provides a framework for building a future based on partnership & mutual respect. We are also filled with optimism that the recent economic success in the areas of job creation & economic expansion can consign to the history books the hardship that blighted Ireland for so long. This optimism is tinged with a realistic & prudent approach to economic planning which should ensure that it continues into the new millennium.

My dear friends, in remembering & in commemorating the Great Famine we are in a special way rescuing our famine dead from the oblivion to which those terrible times condemned them. We pay homage to them while reminding ourselves that we are bound to them by the enduring legacy of history. They are entitled to our pity, our admiration & our respect. I am therefore honoured & privileged to have this opportunity to meet the Australian descendants of the Orphan Girls in this place which was the first shelter for the girls following their long & lonely journey from the land of their birth. I am also honoured to inaugurate the Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine & to express my heartfelt thanks to Tom Power & his Great Irish Famine Commemoration Committee who have worked with so much diligence & dedication to raise the necessary funds for its completion.

I am pleased to announce here today that the Irish Government's will supplement these funds. I have seen the artists' model for the National Monument & congratulate the two eminent sculptors Angela Valamanesh and Hossein Valamanesh who designed it. I thank the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales for agreeing to its construction on this historic site, so close to St Mary's Cathedral, at the very heart of this beautiful Olympic city. Many people, too many for me to mention, have contributed so generously to this National Memorial & I am privileged to see your work of construction begin as I now remove a stone from the wall which will give way to a magnificent National Memorial which will remind us of a harrowing time but which will also bear witness to the triumph of spirit of a unique group of Irish women.
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Mary McAleese

Mary McAleese should know better than make comments such as unique, its shows her ignorance of Irish history. Countless innocent Irish women, young and old went through similar cruel ordeals. Both in Australia and many other parts of the world.

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Irish Famine Memorial in Sydney Australia