Austin is about the trading and selling of stories during its prized South by Southwest (SXSW) festival week. Ireland is no different.
After a meet and greet in the true March heat of the Texas capital, it fell to Taoiseach Micheál Martin to introduce a conference session for Screen Ireland at the pop-up Ireland House, greenified and transported from its usual guise as a laid-back local bar on the eastern reaches of Sixth Street.
His comments were preceded by a short, powerful montage of the best of Irish film. As an exercise in marketing, it struck that fine balance between showing off and hitting all the right emotional pressure points. John Wayne’s sloping grin in The Quiet Man was there alongside Colin Farrell and Jack Reynor’s short, unbeatable stoner older-brother cameo in Sing Street.
The package was ‘For the Story Makers’ and you could tell that Martin, when he rose to speak, was enjoying his afternoon in Texas.
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“We love telling stories and we love trying to out-shock each other in the telling of those stories,” he said before highlighting the key numbers – 15,000 jobs in film alone, a sector worth €1 billion to the Irish economy.
“We are proud of it. I hate using the word proud because my later mother said, ‘never use the word proud, it’s one of the seven deadly sins'. But there is no getting around it.”
[ What experts expect to happen when Micheál Martin meets Donald Trump this weekOpens in new window ]
An hour later, the Taoiseach found himself in front of a live audience in downtown Austin for what was his final engagement of the day. He was introduced by the festival’s rangy president, local man Hugh Forrest. He was taking part in a conversation with Stephanie Metha, an American journalist and chief executive who had done her homework and decided to open the event with a light, offbeat question designed to infuse the big function room with a little local flavour.
[ Taoiseach kicks off US visit with whistlestop tour of Austin and pop-up GaeltachtOpens in new window ]
“I have taken an informal poll and the people want to know -above all: what is your chicken fillet order?”
It would be understandable if, in the hours of preparation nobody had thought to brief the Taoiseach on the intricacies of hot-sauced chicken popular in this city.
“My chicken fillet order?” he replied, mystified.
“Oh, no mayonnaise,” he said at the prompt. “No spice. I’m a salad type of guy. I’m a purist about food as best I can. So, a chicken salad ... tomato ... egg ... it’s not exciting. Don’t worry about it. It’s just me.”
It may well be the only question he didn’t arrive in the US prepared to answer. For the rest of the hour, Martin proceeded to tell the room the story of Ireland’s steady transformation. His political success as been the opposite of out-shocking. Instead, he has out-steadied the rest to emerge as a two-time Taoiseach who is, as he tells it, a product or son of the country he sought to summarise here.
“It’s a relatively long story going back over 40 years. In the first sort of 40 years of Irish independence we were an insular agrarian economy and society. In the 1960s, a very fundamental decision was taken to invest in education and parallel to that was to become a member of what was known as the European common market. Those two decisions were pivotal.”
Martin told the crowd that he was the first in his household to go on to secondary education, to college. From there, he was able to lightly rib Ireland’s business investment community about the story Patrick Collison of Stripe once told him of approaching the State for funding when he and his brother came up with a cockamamie idea to revolutionise the world of digital payments.
“He said, ‘I went to Enterprise Ireland with an idea – and we got in the door.’ Kids! Off you go. And the rest is history. There is a bit of a lesson there. But in any event, if the idea is formed in Ireland and they decide to set up somewhere else, it doesn’t bother me. Because the old saying, swings and roundabouts – it will come your way.”
The purpose to all of this reminiscence gradually and softly closed in on the key message he will try to impress on US president Donald Trump on Wednesday. The two-way street has worked sweetly for Ireland and the United States.
Asked what he would do if the issue of tariffs is raised by his American hosts, he sought to present a more balanced picture, pointing out that if services are allowed into the equation, the imbalance that commerce secretary Howard Lutnick highlighted last autumn actually becomes a deficit.
And there are other examples- such as the enormous orders placed by Ryanair from Boeing – that don’t even come into the conversation.
“So, this is a bit more complex than is presented by figures.”
But still, one of the characteristics of the Trump administration is that week by week, guessing the next event, the next declaration, has become an impossibility. Even the recent turbulence of the stock market has done little to compromise Trump’s avowed faith and belief in the power of the tariff to become a magical elixir for the US heartland.
What, then, is Michael Martin’s key message to Irish businesses?
“I think it is: hold your nerve. This is a period. I was struck last week [when] Brad Smith of Microsoft was in Ireland. Forty years in Ireland, 50 years in existence and 26 of those years were under a republican president, 24 under a Democrat president. So, it is a running jury. I think you have to see how this plays out. It is early days and very often the devil is in the detail. But ... businesses and companies will have to adapt.”
It’s probably something he’ll remind himself to do also as he leaves the feel-good vibes of Austin behind him. Holding your nerve is vital for any statesman entering Trump’s Oval Office. Onwards, to Washington.
