'Wise grandfather' salutes new wave of Irish in America

PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins was everyone’s wise Irish grandfather in the 50th floor penthouse dining room of Bank Mellon at number one Wall Street yesterday morning. The 85 breakfast guests were young Irish immigrants from the Irish Network, which links 1,500 people in 13 US cities.

Just as past Irish immigrants found jobs for one another in the police and fire departments and construction, today’s Irish Network gives new arrivals a leg up in business, finance, law and the arts. “They are young. They are bright. They’re not talking about personal wealth accumulation,” he said approvingly. “Leaving is still a great wrench,” the President continued. “It is important to reach out to others who are finding it difficult.” Too often it’s forgotten that “in transience an enormous creativity happens”, he said. “I want to wish you success with it, that you come to Ireland when you wish, should you wish, but you stay in touch with us.”

The gardaí who travelled with the President from Ireland are outnumbered by secret service men who swarm about him with curly wires hanging from their ears. He and his wife Sabina cut through Manhattan traffic in a nine-car motorcade with flashing lights, dodging cabs that refuse to get out of the way.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden as well as International Workers’ Day, so the President was on symbolic ground on both counts. Out of what he called “respect for the office I hold”, he would not comment on the resumption of Occupy Wall Street protests. On Monday night, he railed against “the acquisitive individualism that drove the worst aspects of the Celtic Tiger”.

The President chatted with dozens of Irish construction workers on the 21st floor of Liberty Tower, overlooking the site of the atrocities that bin Laden planned. “This is an extraordinary blessing to have the President here, especially today,” said Bill Baroni, the deputy director of the Port Authority who has dual US and Irish citizenship. The tower has just surpassed the Empire State Building to become the highest structure in the western hemisphere.

At the 9/11 memorial, the President laid a laurel wreath festooned with a Tricolour ribbon before the “survivor tree” that was salvaged from the rubble. With the waterfalls of the giant reflecting pools thundering before him, he sought out the names of Joseph Hunter, the Irish- American firefighter who was posthumously given a certificate of Irish heritage, and Ruth and Juliana McCourt, the Irish mother and daughter who died in the first plane to hit the towers.

Adrian Flannelly, the president of Irish Radio Network USA who oversaw construction of the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City a decade ago, showed the President and his wife the cottage that was moved stone by stone from Flannelly’s home village, Attymass, in Co Mayo. Raindrops hung from the purple harebells, wild strawberries and roses that were brought from Ireland to grow incongruously beneath the Goldman Sachs Tower.

At City Hall, the mayor Michael Bloomberg and Higgins exchanged gifts – Celtic cufflinks for two crystal apples from Tiffany Co.

The Irish delegation was ecstatic at the news that Enda Walsh’s Broadway adaptation of the Irish film Once, which the President and Mrs Higgins will see tonight, had received 11 Tony Award nominations.

At Consul General Noel Kilkenny’s reception on Monday evening, the President spoke of his wife’s former career as an actor, in the 1960s and 70s. Yesterday they lunched at Kilkenny’s residence with Walsh, the novelist Colum McCann (“a friend”, Higgins said) and other luminaries of the Irish arts scene.