The folksy Kenny got a welcome fit for a rock star when he was mobbed by cheering teenagers (below) at the Young Social Innovators awards ceremony during the week. He loved the attention.
Bounding on to the platform, he roared, “Tang yooverymuch! I know now how those people who perform at concerts must feel: I can’t see anybody, but I know you’re out there. So let’s hear it!” And the young people cheered and stamped their feet.
“It’s great to be here with the future of Ireland!”
Enda said he could “feel the energy” in the hall as his excited audience screamed. He was going down a storm. Until he killed the Bono vibe. Stone dead.
The Taoiseach recalled being at “a well-to-do school” recently when a pupil asked, “Can you explain why we should have a European Union?”
The students waited for his reply, which he told them was: “Did you ever hear the story of Harry Patch?” There were giggles of anticipation as his fans waited for the yarn. Enda put on his serious voice.
“Harry Patch was a young soldier in the British infantry in the first World War. At the Battle of the Somme, where a million men lost their lives, walking from one battlefield to another, he came across a man who was dying because of a shrapnel wound. A serious shrapnel wound.” (As opposed to a minor one, in which case he probably wouldn’t have been dying.)
The teenagers looked at each other and fell silent.
“And he stopped at this man, this other soldier. The man said to him, ‘Shoot me.’ Harry Patch drew his revolver. He was there, he said, for the last 60 seconds of that man’s life, and he said he uttered one word – just one word – which haunted him for 80 years afterwards.
“It is the most sacred word in the English language, and that word was ‘mother’.
“That young man, before he died, gave one cry to his mother, and that’s the reason, essentially, why we should have a European Union: never to allow that kind of situation to happen again.”
That put a stop to the cheering.
“Maybe he should try Harry Potter next time,” muttered a bemused onlooker.
