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Today is National Famine Commemoration Day and the Irish Government is hosting their commemoration events in Ulster for just the third time, having held it in Newry back in 2015. This years event took place today in Milford in Co Donegal
This is the third time the State Commemoration has taken place in Ulster. The public ceremony, which will be broadcast on the RTÉ News Now channel, will provide an opportunity for the people of Donegal to honour the suffering and loss of the Great Famine and to remember those who fled to create new lives abroad. It will feature National flag and military honours before culminating in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony.
President Michael D Higgins who attended the event spoke on the legacy of An Gorta Mór (The great hunger).
President Higgins said “National Famine Commemoration Day is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on and recall the lives, the suffering and the loss of that tragic event imposed on Irish people which we call An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger, the Irish Famine. It is an opportunity too to remember those who fled to create new lives abroad, and reflect on the best lessons we might take from such a recall and how it might influence our contemporary lives and the lives of others. This year’s setting at the old site of the Milford workhouse is so appropriate given the adversity endured by the people of Donegal in the face of poverty, hunger and emigration throughout the 19th century and in particular during the Great Hunger."
He continued "The legacy of An Gorta Mór is complex, deep, wide, has many strands that have impacted on the Irish collective psyche as well as at the individual level. Its legacy is one of involuntary emigration, cultural loss, demoralisation and loss of confidence, both in terms of population and in terms of its impact on the Irish language and the marks this would have on the country, and in particular on Irish society. Given this foundational part of our near historical experience, it is easy to understand how the continuing issues of food security and food sovereignty in our contemporary world resonate profoundly with us as a people and must feature in our ethical reflections and our responses as we commemorate the period of An Gorta Mór. The strong commitment of the Irish people to humanitarian aid and relief is of course strongly related to our own past struggle with hunger, engrained in our collective memory. It is an example of the Irishness we wish to be known by, one grounded in decency, in ethical principles, taking our share of global responsibility."
Speaking on the need to support our global family President Higgins added "We have a moral and ethical responsibility to support our global family in dire need, to help with sustainable solutions to ending all famines, wherever they occur on our shared, vulnerable planet, and to provide a decisive response to climate change which itself is leading to an increased incidence of famines globally. The parallels with An Gorta Mór and the mass displacement it caused 175 years ago must not be lost on us. We have a moral duty to continue to honour our commitments to those vulnerable and displaced who seek asylum and refuge on our shores.”
