Friends are known in hardship: Ireland and America on St. Patrick’s Day
In an ordinary year, an Irish Taoiseach would be visiting Washington, D.C., today to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, reflecting the remarkable connection between Ireland and the United States. It is a connection built on common ideas and values, but one founded most of all on the deepest person-to-person ties. Like President Joe Biden, millions of Americans are the proud descendants of Irish women and men who left their homeland. As migrants do, they traveled in search of a better life for themselves and their children.
However, these are not ordinary times and, as taoiseach, I am not travelling to the U.S. this St. Patrick’s Day.
In the year since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we have all experienced tremendous loss — of lives, of jobs, and of the many things we took completely for granted, not least the warmth of human connection. Yet we have also seen the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to sustain itself through the darkest of times.
Across the world, we saw health workers hold the hands of our dying loved ones when we couldn’t. Volunteers stepped forward to ensure their neighbors, especially our seniors, had what they needed. We found new ways to keep in touch. Scientists around the world applied themselves to one of the greatest challenges of our lifetimes, and triumphed. With vaccines we now have hope. With every arm injected we move a step closer to the return of a more normal life.
We are in this together
What we have seen in the past year is an example of an old Irish concept — known in the Irish language as “meitheal” — the coming together of the community to work for the benefit of all. It is a powerful concept. We must continue to work together to vaccinate people in all parts of the world. We must align economic policies so all boats are lifted, and nobody is left behind. We must pay particular attention to those who have been hardest hit — women, underrepresented and minority groups.
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We need to apply the same approach to the other great global challenges of our time, using multilateralism to address the threat of climate change, to tackle economic inequity, to counter the organized disinformation that undermines faith in democracy.
Ireland is ready to step up, and I know Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are ready too. We will do so as a committed member of the European Union, and as that we will press for a strong EU/U.S. partnership. We will also do so as an elected member of the UN Security Council. We will support others in their path to peace and justice, just as successive U.S. administrations supported the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Among Ireland's greatest glories
In the more than two decades since the Good Friday Agreement, the U.S. has continued to play an important role at delicate times in ensuring its implementation: challenging parties to live up to commitments; supporting them to take the hard decisions when needed.
The Good Friday Agreement came about while Ireland and the United Kingdom were both members of the European Union. The absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland made it easier to give effect to the agreement’s promise that people in Northern Ireland be accepted, as Irish or British, or both, as they chose. Now, post-Brexit, the vital prop of shared EU membership has been removed. Crucially, in its place, we have a Protocol negotiated between the UK and the EU, designed to avoid the return of a hard border and to recognize the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland.
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Ensuring that the Protocol is now implemented in good faith and in full is a vital shared task before us. Just as our U.S. friends — in the White House, on Capitol Hill and beyond — insisted the Good Friday Agreement be protected despite Brexit, I know that they will maintain their steadfast engagement as new arrangements bed down. Their insistence that peace in Northern Ireland, and the principles that underpin it, must endure is deeply appreciated.
This St. Patrick’s Day, though I will be at home, I will meet online with one of the United States’ proudest Irish Americans, President Biden. In our virtual meeting, as I present the shamrock remotely from Dublin to him, with those green shoots holding more poignancy than ever, he and I will discuss the plans we have for the future and how, together, Ireland and America and our allies might build it.
A great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats once wrote, “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.” One of Ireland’s greatest glories is our friendship with America. There may be no great parades down Fifth Avenue or in other U.S. cities this year, but our friendship endures — not just because its roots are deep, but because it is true friendship, known in hardship, shared in success.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Micheál Martin is the taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: St. Patrick's Day looks different in COVID: Ireland prime minister
