[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 200 (Thursday, December 22, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1340-E1341]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 RECOGNIZING AMBASSADOR DANIEL MULHALL

                                  _____
                                 

                          HON. RICHARD E. NEAL

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 22, 2022

  Mr. NEAL. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the extraordinary work 
of Daniel Mulhall during his 5 year tenure (2017-2022) as Ambassador of 
Ireland to the United States of America. Ambassador Mulhall enhanced 
the already positive relationship between our two nations. He was a 
respected voice on important policy issues but also wove in the 
cultural aspects often referencing art, poetry and music in discussions 
and writings.
  Ambassador Mulhall served during a critical time for both our 
nations. In the United States, he witnessed 2 impactful elections, 
experienced a global pandemic, met with elected officials on both sides 
of the aisle about cultural and policy issues and welcomed us into his 
home for celebrations and remembrances. He amplified our economic ties 
with Ireland citing our investment and trade relationship.
  He framed the impact of Brexit on Ireland and the need for the 
Northern Ireland Protocol to navigate it. And he emphasized the 
importance to protect and celebrate the Good Friday Agreement as its 
25th anniversary approaches.
  I enjoyed our work together in my capacity as Chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee, Co-Chair of the Congressional Friends of Ireland 
and as Congressman representing the First Congressional District of 
Massachusetts that is home to one of the largest Irish American 
communities in the nation.
  Not a meeting or conversation would go by without some relevant 
insight about how politics or policies of the day had an impact on 
culture in both our nations.
  As he begins the next chapter of his career, I know he will continue 
to expand his quest for knowledge and share his keen interest and 
wisdom with those forging a path to foreign service. He also will 
provide the space for students to deepen their knowledge about Ireland.
  Diplomacy is the balance of creativity and storytelling. Ireland has 
a story to tell, and Ambassador Mulhall did it with grace and 
precision. That is best described in the book All Strangers Here: 1OO 
Years of Personal Writing from the Irish Foreign Service. It was co-
edited by Angela Byrne, Ragnar Deeney Almquist and Helena Nolan. I 
encourage my colleagues to read the following excerpts. The first is an 
essay by Dan Mulhall entitled, ``A New Day Dawning'' about a visit from 
Queen Victoria to Dublin. The second is a poem by Eavan Boland 
(commissioned by current Ambassador of Ireland to the United States of 
America, Geraldine Byrne Nason), ``Our Future Will Become the Past of 
Other Women.''

                      A New Day Dawning (extract)

                             Daniel Mulhall

     Perched on top of Killiney Hill overlooking Dublin Bay, there 
           is an eighteenth-century obelisk that is visible from 
           many of the southern suburbs of Dublin. This stark 
           monument, erected in 1742 as part of a famine relief 
           scheme, stands at the highest point of a public park 
           that carries in its name a reminder of Ireland as it 
           was the last time a century came to a close. In 1900 
           this amenity was known as Victoria Park, and

[[Page E1341]]

           this was the year when Queen Victoria made only the 
           third visit to Ireland of her very long reign. Victoria 
           Park had been acquired in 1887 by the Queen's Jubilee 
           Memorials Association to commemorate the 50th year of 
           her reign. In April 1900, as the recently commissioned 
           royal yacht, Victoria and Albert, sailed into Dublin 
           Bay for the start of the Queen's three-week stay in 
           Ireland, the obelisk in Victoria Park could be seen 
           from the deck of the monarch's vessel. Someone in her 
           party may well have pointed the monument out to the 
           ageing monarch, and recalled its connection with her. 
           There was a fireworks display on Killiney Hill on the 
           evening of her arrival while the Queen was still on 
           board the vessel docked at Kingstown.
     For many in turn-of-the-century Ireland, this rare Royal 
           visit was a huge highlight, the years undoubted 
           centrepiece. For others, the aged Queen's presence in 
           Dublin served as an uncomfortable reminder of the 
           painful calamities that had befallen the Irish people 
           during her reign. It was essential for the British 
           establishment to tread warily between the competing 
           forces of nationalism an unionism. In a burst of 
           doggerel, the popular poet, Percy French, imagines the 
           Queen's after-dinner speech as overheard by Jamesy 
           Murphy, the fictional Deputy Assistant-Waiter at the 
           Vice-Regal Lodge. The Queen recalls advice she received 
           not to travel to Ireland:
     `They was greatly in dread,' sez she,
     `I'd be murthered or shot,' sez she,
     `As like as not,' sez she.
     French's lines manage to conjure up the atmosphere of the 
           period and the political squabbles generated by the 
           Queen's Irish sojourn. He visualises the advice she 
           might have given Lord Zetland before they set out for 
           Ireland:
     `Remember and steer,' sez she,
     `Uncommonly clear,' sez she,
     `I know what you mean,' sez he,
     `Up wid the green,' sez he,
     `And `God Save the Queen,' sez he. [. . .]
     The Royal visit's immediate political purpose was to stem the 
           tide of anti-British feeling generated by the outbreak 
           of the Boer War. As the Marquis of Salisbury remarked, 
           `no one can suppose that she goes to Ireland for 
           pleasure.' Cadogan, the Lord Lieutenant, assured the 
           Queen, who was known to have had no great warmth of 
           feeling for Ireland, that she would be greeted `with 
           unbounded loyalty and pleasure,' but this reassuring 
           simplification was not the full story.
     In nationalist circles, Dublin Corporation's decision, taken 
           by 30 votes to 22 despite the body's nationalist 
           majority, to deliver a `loyal address' to the visiting 
           sovereign, caused a considerable stir. The prime mover 
           behind the decision was the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Sir 
           Thomas Devereux Pile. Elected as a home ruler, and 
           having been a member of the Wolfe Tone one and `98 
           Martyrs Memorial Committee, Mayor Pile, an English-born 
           fish merchant about whose political views Dublin Castle 
           initially had strong misgivings on account of his 
           association with Fred Allen, a Lancashire man with a 
           Fenian background, had already broken the conventions 
           of nationalist politics by making an official call on 
           the Lord Lieutenant and by failing to keep himself 
           sufficiently aloof from the British administration.
     Pile's unpopularity marred Dublin's first ever St Patrick's 
           Day Parade which was `favoured with charming weather'. 
           The Mayor was hissed by sections of the crowd and had 
           stones thrown at his carriage. There were pro-Boer 
           cheers from sections of the crowd and when a Boer flag 
           was flown it was seized by a mounted policeman and the 
           crowd was baton charged. On the eve of the Queen's 
           arrival, dissenting members of the Corporation provoked 
           renewed political debate, this time about the Act of 
           Union, whose centenary was the ostensible rationale for 
           the visit. They declared that the Union had been 
           `obtained by fraud and shameful corruption', and that 
           there would be `neither contentment nor loyalty in this 
           country until our national parliament is restored.' The 
           public gallery was crowded for the debate and those who 
           condemned the Act of Union were loudly cheered. After 
           heated exchanges, the nationalist motion was carried by 
           42 votes to nine. Taunts of `flunkeyism' were levelled 
           at the motion's opponents who complained of its extreme 
           language. As a result, the Royal visit, though meant as 
           an opportunity to acknowledge Ireland's English 
           connection, was turned into an occasion for underlining 
           nationalist Ireland's undying opposition to the Union 
           between the two islands. Local authorities had become 
           an important new arena within which nationalists could 
           air their political grievances and vaunt their 
           identity. Later in the year, Dublin Corporation moved 
           to confer the freedom of the City on the Boer leader, 
           President Kruger, who was then in exile in Paris. While 
           this bid was ruled out of order on procedural grounds, 
           it further highlighted the Corporation's 
           antiestablishment credentials. Other local authorities 
           did succeed in honouring Kruger. There were frequent 
           disputes because of decisions by local authorities to 
           fly nationalist flags on public buildings in defiance 
           of local unionist opinion.
     The Royal visit posed a dilemma for nationalist 
           parliamentarians who could hardly warm to it. At the 
           same time, they had no desire to give offence to the 
           aged monarch. To mark the visit, there were a number of 
           Royal pronouncements designed to please Irish opinion, 
           including the creation of a new regiment, the Irish 
           Guards, to be based at Buckingham Palace. After 
           consulting with Tim Healy, John Redmond decided to 
           adopt a conciliatory line. Alluding to another 
           recently-announced Royal gesture, he predicted that the 
           Irish people:
     would receive with gratification the announcement that Her 
           Majesty has directed that for the future the shamrock 
           shall be worn by Irish regiments on March 17th to 
           commemorate the gallantry of Irish soldiers in South 
           Africa.
     Parnell's sister, Anna, was decidedly unimpressed by the 
           Queen's `cruel little insult' to the shamrock, and 
           wrote that:
     those who cannot refrain from wearing the shamrock should dip 
           it in ink until its dishonour has been wiped out either 
           by the final triumph of the Boers or in some other way.
     The issue divided the Parnell family. Her brother, John, 
           distanced himself from his sister's defence of the 
           shamrock's honour and took part in the ceremonies 
           marking the Queen's arrival in Dublin. On St Patrick's 
           Day 1900, many English people took their cue from the 
           Queen and decided to wear the shamrock. On arrival at 
           Kingstown, the Queen was careful to display the emblem 
           prominently on her lapel.

        Our Future Will Become The Past of Other Women (extract)

                              Eavan Boland

     Show me your hand. I see our past,
     Your palm roughened by heat, by frost.
     By pulling a crop out of the earth
     By lifting a cauldron off the hearth.
     By stripping rushes dipped in fat
     To make a wick make a rush light.
     That was your world: your entry to
     Our ancestry in our darkest century.
     Ghost-sufferer, our ghost-sister
     Remind us now again that history
     changes in one moment with one mind.
     That it belongs to us, to all of us.
     As we mark these hundred years
     We will not leave you behind.
     [. . .]
     If we could only summon
     Or see them these women,
     Foremothers of the nurture
     And dignity that will come
     To all of us from this day
     We could say across the century
     To each one-give me your hand:
     It has written our future.
     Our future will become
     The past of other women.
     Our island that was once
     Settled and removed on the edge
     Of Europe is now a bridge
     To the world. And so we share
     This day with women everywhere.
     For those who find the rights they need
     To be hard won, not guaranteed,
     Not easily given, for each one
     We have a gift, a talisman:
     The memory of these Irish women
     Who struggled and prevailed.
     For whose sake we choose
     These things from their date
     To honour, to remember and to celebrate:
     All those who called for it,
     The vote for women.
     All those who had the faith
     That voices can be raised. Can be heard.
     All those who saw their hopes
     Become the law. All those who woke
     In a new state flowering
     From an old nation and found
     Justice no longer blind.
     Inequity set aside.
     And freedom re-defined.

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