The Great Famine “changed who we were and who we are” and 170 years later its “indelible marks” are still there in Irish culture, society, politics and the State’s place in the wider world, the Taoiseach has said.
Addressing an event commemorating the 1845-52 famine, which resulted in more than two million people either dying or emigrating, Micheál Martin said famine was an irregular but significant part of Irish and European history.
“However, the 19th century was supposed to be the age of new technology in transport, communications and agriculture. Widespread famines were supposed to be a thing of the past – here we were to witness the most devastating and widespread death through starvation and illness ever recorded,” he said in his speech at the National Famine Museum in Strokestown, Co Roscommon on Sunday.
“The rising nationalist and then republican politics which followed in the decades, which ultimately led to independence, was absolutely shaped by the famine and public understanding of what had been allowed to happen.”
Mr Martin cited the Nobel Prize-winning economists Amartya Sen, who studied famines and concluded that they do not happen in democracies.
“I think if you want to know why Ireland never again had a famine, you will find it in our commitment to self-determination and building a democratic state. Our refusal to follow the extreme ideologies of the 20th century was driven by this commitment. As we mark 100 years of this State, that is a powerful lesson for us to remember.”
Ukraine
The Taoiseach said one of the reasons why the people of Ukraine “prize their freedom so dearly is that they too bear deep scars from a famine which destroyed millions of lives”.
“The Holodomor of 1932-33 was a crime against humanity – a famine imposed on what is one of the largest food-producing countries in the world,” he said.
“When the people of Ukraine voted for independence, they did so in a spirit of self-reliance and without rancour. They chose for themselves a simple flag of a clear sky over fields of wheat. It was not an aggressive and exclusionary nationalism, but a nationalism which we and so many others can relate to.”
Minister of State Jack Chambers told the event, which took place in Strokestown for the first time since 2014, that final preparations were being made to reopen the museum later this month after a €5 million redevelopment.
He described the famine “as the darkest period in our history” and said it was “important we remember the victims”.
Following a wreath-laying ceremony, a minute’s silence was observed in memory of the victims of the famine, following which the Last Post was performed, the tricolour was raised and Amhrán na bhFiann was performed.