When Ade and Irene Odunsi arrived at Dublin’s Convention Centre on Thursday afternoon, they didn’t expect to be able to sit together for the Irish citizenship ceremony. Both were due to receive Irish citizenship this week. However, Ade was scheduled for Thursday’s ceremony while Irene would return for Friday’s event.
“When Ade was registering the lady said we could do it together today,” Irene told The Irish Times. “I’m just grateful that we could actually complete this journey together.”
The couple, originally from Nigeria and the UK, where they met in 1999, emerged from Thursday’s ceremony holding hands and with broad smiles on their faces. Ten minutes earlier, they hugged and kissed after saying the oath of fidelity to the Irish nation alongside nearly 1,000 others who were conferred with Irish citizenship at Thursday’s event.
After nine years here, Ireland has become not only home “but a place where people look at us, and we look at others, and we feel a sense of community that you simply can’t even touch”, said Ade. “It’s just something that just keeps you strong inside.”
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More than 5,000 people received Irish citizenship this week at a series of ceremonies in Dublin which carried a special theme – people who found love in Ireland.
Alba Molinero, who came to Ireland a decade ago as an au pair, stayed after she met and fell in love with her now husband, James Pelow. The couple now run an Irish translation company and live in Gorey, Co Wexford, with their two children, Lúna and Ferdia. Alba said the theme of love resonated because of the love Ireland has brought to her life. “My three big loves are here – my husband and my two kids.”
Born and brought up in Spain, Alba already had European citizenship before this week. However, being Irish means, “I can have my say in elections. An Irish passport also gives me more benefits than a Spanish passport.”
Bringing up her two children through Spanish and Irish, Alba feels a deep connection with the national language. “The phrase that resonates with me is ‘Fáilte Abhaile’. Each time I return to Ireland and see those words in the airport, I know I’m home.”
Peg Chiu, a special needs teacher who first came to Ireland from Hong Kong in 2006, said becoming Irish citizenship was “a major milestone” in her life. She was joined at Thursday’s ceremony by her daughter Kate and her husband Toni, whom she met in 2011 at a Christmas meet-up “for people from all over the world”.
“Ireland gave me love, I met my Italian husband here. In Cantonese, we have a saying – ‘yuan2 fen4’ – meaning ‘predestined connection’. I believe it was yuan2 fen4 that brought me to Ireland and brought my husband and me together in this place we now call home.”
For Sarah Lamswood, a public health nurse originally from Newfoundland who now lives in Killarney, the date of this week’s citizenship ceremony was “a bit serendipitous”. “It’s 16 years exactly since I met my husband Mark on St Valentine’s Day in 2009 at Whelan’s pub in Dublin. And we’ve been together ever since.”
The couple’s children were born in Canada but the family returned to Ireland in 2018. “I could have applied for citizenship before now but I don’t think I’d have properly appreciated it. I felt so uprooted leaving everything behind in Canada, but I feel accepted and part of the community now.
“Immigrants have so much to offer and I think Ireland is starting to see that. We have thrived as a family since moving here and I feel very grateful for the opportunities that Ireland has offered us.”
Attendees at Thursday’s citizenship ceremony heard how migration had played an “essential and hugely positive role” in Irish society. “Ireland is a place where you are accepted, valued, cherished, celebrated, safe and loved,” Minister of State Niall Collins told attendees, adding that people should embrace “differences, diversities and similarities”.
Presiding officer of ceremonies Justice Mary Irvine called on the new Irish citizens to play their own role in contributing to “the creation of a new and more inclusive and diverse society”.
“In bringing your culture and traditions and all of your unique experiences to this country and in joining them with ours, you will redefine what it means to be Irish, and you are going to enrich our national life,” she said.
