Every person who suffers hunger in the modern world is an affront to the memory of those who died in the Famine, President Mary McAleese said today.
At special commemoration of the Great Hunger in New York, the president called for poverty and starvation to be eliminated across the globe.
Ms McAleese’s attendance at the memorial event at Battery Park City was the culmination of a four-day visit to promote economic links with the United States and strengthen connections with the local Irish community.
Mrs McAleese said Ireland was proud of its Famine emigrants and its global family. “I thank New York for remembering their pain, for respecting them so graciously and for insisting that we vindicate their lives and deaths by making this awful, avoidable suffering a thing of the past, right across the globe,” she said.
Earlier in the day the President spoke at a special ceremony at the Temple Shearith Israel to mark the assistance Jewish people in New York offered during the Famine.
During her trip the President met with business leaders at the New York Stock Exchange and visited a Brooklyn school where students have been learning about the Great Hunger.
The former barrister also received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Fordham University in the Bronx.
Ms McAleese praised the support expatriates had offered their home country over the years.
“We in Ireland have been blessed by the fact that they and their descendants never forgot their native land, never lost their love of her culture and heritage and stayed bound to her through all the ups and downs of history.
“Their dollars faithfully sent home from the humblest of incomes helped stem the tide of poverty and helped to educate the next generation. Their active interest helped in the struggle for independence and more recently in the effort mobilised to achieve peace in Northern Ireland.”
PA