Professor Tommy Cooke:

I thank the committee for inviting me to today's meeting. I have had the pleasure of being on the national Famine commemoration committee for nine years. It has been a great honour for me. I have seen the commemoration evolve over those years. There are three main thrusts of the national famine commemoration committee. The first is to facilitate the national and international commemoration of the Famine. The second is to reach out and try to engage the diaspora in whatever way we can. The third is to increase awareness of hunger worldwide in whatever way we can.

There has been significant community involvement in the national element of the commemoration. The event rotates to a different province each year. In the past, various towns sent in applications and competed to host the event. Each community addressed the event in different ways and that was a big part of the success of the commemoration within the community.

We have probably not been as successful with the other two parts, namely, reaching out to the diaspora and improving awareness of hunger issues worldwide. However, we have moved some way towards resolving that with the development of a marvellous website by the Department in conjunction with University College Cork. This is a research tool that allows us to look at the evolution of the Famine from 1841 to 1851 and the changes in demographics and various statistics over the period simply by moving a cursor across the screen. The website can be further developed. My vision for it, in conjunction with members of the national famine commemoration committee, is that we could engage the diaspora in innovative ways by developing the website as a repository. People from around the world could submit their stories, photographs of artefacts or whatever else to a managed system. The website is also being used by schools. When we started to develop the website schools in Northern Ireland showed great interest in becoming involved.

The military element could be an issue when we are talking about the North. We involved the North and its turn to host the commemoration will come around again. The Protestant Famine communities in the North were equally affected as many Famine communities down South.

To be blunt, the interfaith service in some of the previous commemorations went on for too long and in some ways caused people to disengage from the reflective event that had been organised with music, poetry, enactments and so on. It is hard to get back into that zone again. For this reason, I would be worried about prescribing an interfaith service as part of the commemoration.