Sticky PostingsOilSpeech from the 9th Annual Congressional Forum
9th Annual Congressional Forum Speech
 as promised... OPENING Esteemed guests, friends of the Washington Ireland Program, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is with great pleasure and excitement that on behalf of the Washington Ireland Program Class of 2008 I welcome you to the 9th Annual Congressional Forum. My name is Lauren Allison and I am currently an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews in Scotland reading International Relations and French. Being in the US Capitol today, as a girl from Belfast, I feel humbled. This is just one of the many experiences afforded to the Class of 2008; experiences that will never be forgotten and for which we will always be grateful. The people of Northern Ireland and Ireland have many friends in America and this is no less evident in the room today. The Friends of Ireland in Congress continue to show their tremendous support to Ireland and the Washington Ireland Program. Over the last decade a champion of that support has been Congressman James T. Walsh, with whom I have been interning and who we are proud to honour this evening. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement; an accord that changed the lives of everybody both North and South of the border. This evening, my teammates will offer their reflections of the last ten years and their aspirations for the next. I don't want to give away my age, but this time ten years ago, I was approaching my tenth birthday. It was at this tender age that I first became conscious of the realities of the 'Troubles'. This Saturday marks the ten year anniversary of the deaths of Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn who, aged only 9, 10 and 11, were killed in a firebomb attack at their home during marching season. As I watched the news of the tragedy unfold on the television a stark realisation presented itself; these boys were the same age as me. The news reporter could offer no reason for this attack, only the house was targeted because the family were Catholic. Confused, this prompted me to quiz my parents, whether I was Catholic or Protestant. Mark Quinn was ten-years-old when I was 10-years old. Now I am turning twenty and sadly Mark Quinn will not be. Ten years on, I am aware that this small lifetime was denied to the Quinn brothers. The then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, captured this sentiment in the aftermath, stating that: "With the Good Friday Agreement and the election of the New Northern Ireland Assembly, the ground has been laid for those better times. Tragically Mark, Richard and Jason will not share them." This evening we will hear from 4 speakers, all of who lived through the last ten years. They will speak of a troubled history overcome and look to future challenges that we can face together with a new sense of optimism. So without further ado, let me introduce you to Catherine Green who will share with us some of her recollections from the past. Catherine Green's speech can be read here. As Catherine said in ten years Northern Ireland has come through a lot but I am glad to say that the events of the past are no longer are true depictions of the Northern Ireland we see today. I would now like to invite Luke O'Donnell to the front to speak about how the Celtic Tiger has shaped Ireland and the importance of economic partnership with the United States of America. Luke O 'Donnell's speech can be read here. Both Catherine and Luke highlighted past challenges, which our two countries have overcome. This being said, 10 years is, in the lens of history, a very short time and we are currently faced with other challenges, which have only emerged recently. I would like now to invite Fiona McCarrick to speak about the new challenges, which face our ever-changing cultures. Fiona McCarrick's will be added soon. As Fiona said, culture has changed in Ireland and Northern Ireland. There is an emergence in Northern Ireland of a generation who no longer identify with the sectarian stereotypes, which have been imposed on them. This in itself, although challenging our traditional sectarian divides positively, raises many challenges on identity amongst the youth in Northern Ireland. Allow me to introduce to you Laura McManus, whose experiences touch on this issue. Laura McManus's speech can be read here. CLOSING I hope it is evident from these four testimonies that the past decade has meant different things to different people. We all come from diverse backgrounds despite residing on a relatively small island. For football enthusiasts the last 10 years have seen some momentous occasions such as the 1-0 victory of Northern Ireland over England. For others there have been much more momentous moments politically such as the signing of the St Andrews Agreement. But one thing remains a common strand in each of these challenges. Despite being Irish, British or Northern Irish, the people of our nations now recognise that to move forward and face future challenges we must work together. Yes, 10 years on, I can say we all, look forward to a much more promising future. I have a faith and a hope that 10 years from now, perhaps the next generation of future leaders will be standing here describing successes we could never have imagined. American author Henry David Thoreau once said: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” I believe this is true of Northern Ireland and Ireland. We have seen many events in the last 10 years that could be termed as unexpected successes. Who would have believed 10 years ago that the momentous pictures of two sworn enemies laughing together in Stormont would have been splashed across news screens the world over. So let us advance towards the dreams of a society where religion and politics don’t dictate where people live, work or travel. Let us advance towards achieving the goal that one day we will see a society where our own children celebrate their differences and appreciate the culture of others so that, together, regardless of their political beliefs, they may live in a peaceful, stable and just society. Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn will not get to enjoy the society we now live in, but we can. I challenge not only the leaders in our home nations, but each individual, not to forget the deaths of the Quinn brothers and the 3,523 victims of the troubles but honour them by not wasting our opportunities and make Northern Ireland and Ireland countries to be proud of. Wednesday, October 22. 2008Interview with Father Charles Currie
Father Charles Currie has been the president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities since 1997. He began his academic career teaching and doing research in chemistry at Georgetown University in 1966. He served as president of several higher education institutions and directed Georgetown University's Bicentennial celebration. I interviewed him during my last week in DC.
What were you doing when you were 21? I was just beginning the training to be a Jesuit. This was in 1951 so it was a very different world, a very different church. It was a great experience. We had 42 novices in my class; today we’re lucky if we get four or five. What are your thoughts on the relationship between science and religion? When I got to St. Joe’s in Philadelphia I had a fascinating 6 years teaching a course in science and theology. And that’s a very interesting field today. It used to be that you would get some theologians trying to do some science or scientists trying to do some theology but there’s a lot more people who have been trained today in both so the quality of conversation and discussion is much better. Who has been the most influential person in your life and why? There are a lot of people: Father Tim Healy was a young Jesuit when I was studying in Fordham New York. It was in his room one night that I made my decision to be a priest and I later worked with him at Georgetown where he was President. Of course my parents; they’re both very special people. I attribute any intelligence I have with dealing with women to the relationship I had with my sister. We had a great relationship and I thought that was very formative. What do you value most in life? My faith: I think sometimes we take that for granted. It came home to me very graphically once when I was trying to help a woman dying in a hospital. She not only didn’t have any family but she didn’t have any faith and she was desperate and that made me realize how lucky I was to have a faith that puts things together and that personal relationship with God, with Christ. How did you get to where you are today? I don’t know how to answer that one except a lot of things were kind of accidental. I guess the first key decision was to become a Jesuit and then the kind of work I got involved in as a Jesuit: higher education. That certainly puts you on a certain path. What are the main aims of your association? I see our role as representing the 26 Jesuit higher education institutions to the Church, the Society of Jesus, the other higher education associations, Congress, the Administration. But the role that I think is even more important is promoting collaboration and we do a lot of that. How do you balance liturgical life with the demands of your job? Some folks feel that in an administrative role such as this that a priest has to put aside his priesthood. I think that’s nonsense. I don’t think a day has gone by in my role in this job that I haven’t been called on to do something pastoral. What’s your favourite place in Washington? I’ve been in Washington over 25 years. I think you have to be inspired by three obvious memorials of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. The Holocaust Museum is a very profound human experience. There’s so much cultural life in this city. Washington is my favourite city because there’s so much here. How did you get involved with the situation in El Salvador? I knew nothing about El Salvador until I was coming back from Vietnam. The President of Georgetown told me six Jesuits and their two co-workers had just been killed in El Salvador and I organized Georgetown’s response to this. So I had an intensive crash course in El Salvador and Central America and I was privileged to go down there just a couple weeks after the Jesuit’s were killed. That was a very moving time. It’s very much a part of my life now. You know once you get involved with El Salvador you don’t leave. Dean Bradley, a great Jesuit down there – he was one of the ones who took the place of those who were killed, always says the Salvadors will break your heart and then they’ll help you put it back together again. What advice would you give a young university graduate? Keep a sense of hope in your power to make a difference. The purpose of education is to develop your imagination; with your imagination you create options for yourself; with those options you have a sense of hope. If you have that imagination then you have the tools to really make a difference in the world. 
Interview with Frank McGuinness
Before I went to DC I interviewed the award winning Irish playwright Frank McGuinness.
What were you doing when you were 20? I was studying English at UCD and that was my big passion at the time. I had a very good second year in College. It was a great liberating year because I was so homesick in my first year. Second year I met a lot more people, I was more sure in what I was doing, I had become enamoured with the city so I was a happy guy at 20, very happy. How did your university course impact on your career? There was an enormous opportunity to read and to tackle big authors like Chaucer, Wordsworth, Milton and Pope. Without knowing it at the time, when you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in difficult subjects you carry a good working memory of them with you and that’s very, very important. But one of the main things about university was that it introduced me to people from beyond the Derry-Donegal hinterland. Who has been the most influential person in your life and why? My mother unquestionably. She was a very, very powerful person, a very funny person, a very intelligent person. She worked in a shirt factory. She really was an enormous positive force for me and it’s from her I think that I got a fierce determination to do well because she would have loved the opportunity that I got. What do you value most in life? I value my relationship with my partner Philip. Life for gay people has got better in this country but it still is a struggle, particularly for younger gay men and lesbians, and we’ve been together thirty years this month in May and it’s lasted. It’s had its ups and its downs like any thirty-year relationship but if you asked me what I’m proud of most that is it: that we are still together. Did you always want to write and how did you transform that dream into a reality? I did always want to write but I think the only hard way of being a writer is work and I had to sit down and really write and rewrite and put my mind to it and slog and really, really try to get better and better and better and I still do that. Do you have a particular writing process? I write longhand in a little red copybook. If I get past page twenty with that it means the play will be finished. I can’t write without a title. I’ve no fixed time for work but I would certainly do a fair amount in the week and I do a fair amount of reading and thinking. Was there a particular moment when you thought: “I’m a proper writer” now? That day was when I was 20 or 21 and I got a letter from David Marcus from The Irish Press saying the first poems were going to be published. And then of course there was the day that The Factory Girls my first play was accepted for the Abbey. How important is your nationality to your work? Well it’s just a hard fact. My background is Irish, I write about Ireland and make no apologies about it. It’s a complex society we live in, perhaps even more complex now that the North has a semblance of peace without the savage, brutal war happening. I’m intrigued by this country. I am intrigued by the cultures of this island. What writers should an aspiring writer read? You can do worse than read Jane Austen for plotting and for subtlety of characterisation. In Irish writing I think that Heaney is still a great voice, so many people imitate him that’s the only thing, and the same with Muldoon. So, in poetry, I think you should read all of W.H. Auden because I think he’s a benevolent influence on Irish people because he is, without being facetious, so English and yet American, American and yet English. You’ve got this wonderful confusion in him that’s very good for Irish people to have. I think you should certainly have a good working knowledge of Lorca and Ibsen, the Europeans, and among Irish writers you should be ashamed of yourself if you’re a playwright and you don’t know the whole of Synge - in terms of stagecraft and how you can push things in plays Synge is the master. What advice would you give to a young university graduate? Well I really regret not travelling after I did my primary degree. I think it’s very good to take the opportunities offered to you to go abroad - even if it’s only to Blackpool. Do something with it: go away and leave your self and your family behind you. What I did do was to believe that everything was going to be alright in terms of making a career out of my Arts background. And I think that requires stamina and it requires a big degree of faith in yourself. So I think you’ve got to follow your head as well as your heart, believe in your luck and you also sometimes have to make your own luck. 
Last thoughts on WIPTuesday, October 21. 2008All good things...!Sunday, September 28. 2008Graduation SpeechSaturday, September 20. 2008Got WIP?A Day in the Law Library of CongressWIP continues....
I have a confession to make - I never managed to arrange my 10 questions in Washington BUT I did manage to arrange to interview British Consul General to the United States Mr Bob Peirce via telephone so I must have paid some attention to all this talk of networking after all. I managed to arrange this with much help from my wonderful host parents.
That is just one of the many things WIP offers - the chance to talk to people who you would otherwise never come into contact with; below is a brief snippet of my interview with Mr Peirce.  Consul General Bob Peirce Bob Peirce has led a distinguished career in the British Foreign Office which he joined at the age of 22 after completing a history degree at Oxford. His first posting was to Hong Kong, a position that he relished having always had the desire to travel in the Far East. ‘Throughout university I didn’t have any clear plan of what I wanted to do, what I did know was that I wanted to travel and the Far East offered the adventure of the unknown so I considered it unbelievably fortunate that my first position took me to Hong Kong’. Good luck is something that Mr Peirce modestly stresses when discussing his career. Having worked as a member of the Hong Kong government on negotiations for the handover of the region to China and as chief executive for the Patten Commission’s report into the policing of Northern Ireland his career has involved him in perhaps two of the most significant diplomatic issues the British government has been engaged with in the last century. ‘It’s nice to have had the chance to give history a nudge; there are many people who have worked in the foreign office for their entire lives without receiving these kinds of opportunities’ he says. Mr Peirce describes his work in Northern Ireland as simultaneously the greatest challenge and achievement of his career. It was not in the remit of the Patten Commission to serve as a South African style Truth and Reconciliation panel but Mr Peirce found that as he travelled around the towns of Northern Ireland people used the forums organised by the commission as an outlet for their frustrations that had built up during the troubles. ‘Unionists and Nationalists were in the same room discussing the same issue and at times it was very emotional as some people were hearing the other community’s side of the story for the first time. The meetings seemed to provide people with an outlet to vent their feelings’. Ten years on from the commission’s report Northern Ireland has a new police force and Mr Peirce believes the province is now in the position whereby it can offer advice internationally with regards to policing: ‘The Patten report can serve as a guideline for a modern police force and it brought interest from around the world. After the report it became accepted to listen to what the PSNI had to say on policing, for instance Chief Constable Hugh Orde recently gave a talk to the LAPD; despite the respect the RUC merited it was in a difficult position to give advice to other bodies’. Northern Ireland has obviously left its own mark on Mr Peirce as he speaks fondly of his recent visit to Belfast and his pride in seeing the many positive changes that have come over the city in the past ten years. Indeed it is clear that he still retains many connections with the province but the life of a diplomat is not for the sedentary and Mr Peirce now finds himself working in Los Angles as British Consul General to America. ‘The consulate employs over 60 people (the size of a large Embassy in most countries) working towards the goal of improving commercial, business, scientific and educational links between California and Great Britain’. When people think of the links between Great Britain and America it is common to consider little outside of Westminster and Washington but Mr Peirce is keen to challenge this assumption. ‘The special relationship between the countries is all about perception; the countries share the same genes, but the media can be fixated on the rapport between the Chief Executives as the barometer for this relationship, whether that be Bush or Blair or Brown. The relationship exists at many other levels, for example a joint research project between Queens University Belfast and California Tech. does not depend on how well the President and Prime Minister get along. America was founded on a British political philosophy and grew with immigrants from all over Great Britain and Ireland’. I would like to thank Mr Peirce for taking a considerable amount of time out of his busy schedule to talk to me, it was much appreciated. Back to Normal
I’ve been back for over a month now and the amazing thing is how quickly everything in life goes back to normal. As expected I returned to the question ‘well how was Washington?’ I keep thinking about this and even now, over a month after returning home, I still have no answer. Thinking about Washington now it seems like a distant mirage, a world away from life at home but for two months it was a distinct reality.
I think the last day of work as an intern was when it really hit me just how extraordinary the experience of being an intern on the Hill had been. Me and Neil spent the afternoon walking the Brumidi- painted corridors recounting the stories we had passed on to tour groups during our internship (if you’re ever there look out for the impressive Hawaiian statues and the painting of John Adams standing on Jefferson’s toes) . Most of these stories are doubtless true but some are likely the result of an inadvertent game of Chinese whispers played out by generations of interns creating an apocryphal history of the buildings (can you really fit the statue of liberty inside the Rotunda?). Looking around the neo classical grandeur that had been our workplace for the last 6 weeks it suddenly dawned on me just how exceptional, in every sense of the word, working here had been. But, equally I was aware and surprised that this feeling of awe had not been with me for the whole of my 6 weeks there. In fact it was amazing how quickly working on the other side of the Atlantic in such auspicious surroundings became part of the everyday, it took the realisation of departure for it to sink in. Normality can become whatever situation a person finds themselves in. In Northern Ireland the situation of growing up without an understanding or even with a hatred of your neighbour became normal. The challenge now is to establish a new day to day normality in Northern Ireland without a hatred and mistrust of each other.  The end is near, as Jefferson lurks in the shadows Can you dig it? Caution! Man at Work In case I haven’t emphasised this enough -WIP really does offer a diversity of experience – this thought struck me as I sat hunched on my knees in the middle of a playground in Ballymun attempting to spray paint the outline of a hop scotch square with all the geometrical care of Pythagoras. As it turned out the square was more of rhombus but as me and Colm (my company in this task) circled the playground we found several perspectives which made our handiwork look more like a playground as opposed to acts of wanton vandalism. Like any good workmen we blamed our tools – or maybe our lack of precision was an after effect of having spent the afternoon at an intoxicatingly- close proximity to spray paint. However the school’s headmistress seemed happy with our work or else didn’t want to shatter our paint speckled good humour. By the end of the day, our team had dug several vegetable patches, a butterfly garden, weeded flowerbeds and painted a playground for the Ballymun Regeneration Project. And that is what WIP should be about- challenging yourself and trying to give something back to the community and during a summer of challenging (and often surreal) experiences there was always someone there experiencing it with you. The weekend in Dublin reminded me how much I really loved this summer and the people I spent it with– or maybe that’s just the spray paint talking.  Ground Force: The College Years The Fool on the Hill
‘Democracy is the worst form of government…... except for all the others’
Sitting in Congressman Kennedy’s office on day one of my internship was a somewhat surreal experience – I was nervous enough without Kennedy family photos peering down at me. I sat there not quite knowing what to do or who to approach until a staffer grabbed me and took me into a meeting, throughout which I said little but compensated by nodding a lot. There really is no such thing as a typical day on Capitol Hill – I had the chance to attend press conferences with the Congressman, make notes on committee hearings and attend office meetings but I also spent a lot of time fulfilling the more prosaic office duties such as answering the phone or opening the mail. The most important lesson I learned from all this was that although in my own head I couldn’t help considering a committee hearing on energy policy as something pretty important that for the office the most important tasks I fulfilled were opening the mail and answering the phone. Why? Well this brings the office into direct contact with the voters, so while I may not relish my third telephone conversation of the day with Jim from Providence, the office does. If they need to know what’s happening at a committee meeting or press conference they can just turn on C-Span (Capitol Hill’s TV station), rather than waiting for the intern to arrive back with some hastily scribbled notes. When they sent me to committee hearing this was as much for my value as their own, so I can only thank them for giving me so many opportunities like this. That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything from answering the phone and mail on a daily basis. Harold Ickes described Washington as a ‘city of hand wringers’ persistently postulating on every issue under the sun – committees, committees about committees, think tanks all trading in the currency of policy and influence; sometimes it’s important to listen to Jim from Providence.  My Boss- Congressman Patrick Kennedy A Night with SAWIP Congressman Donald Payne We were further privileged to hear a speech from Congressman John Lewis at this event. He recounted how, at the age of 15, seeing the injustice faced by black Americans, he simply asked his mother ‘why?’. She told him firmly not to get involved but a young Lewis had other ideas and said that he has made it his life’s ambition to ‘get in the way’. He has spent his life fighting against racial discrimination and at just the age of 23 he shared the stage with Martin Luther King, speaking on the day of the reverends ‘I have a dream’ speech. Sadly Lewis is the only one of the ten speakers from that day who is still alive, so to hear him speak was truly humbling and something I will never forget. His words and the words of the SAWIP interns were inspiring and I’d like to thank the South Africans for letting us share in their evening. The event offered us a different insight into DC from the Irish – American events that we had so far attended. It is on nights like this that you realise that WIP really does offer experiences so far removed from everyday life; it is up to us to take these experiences home with us. Friday, September 19. 2008A Boat Ride on The Beast |
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