Tom Barry (Cork East, Fine Gael)

Edmund Burke wrote: "Politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part".

Edmund's mother was Mary Nagle, whose people, a large extended family, were the leading Catholics in what is still known as Nagle country in the Blackwater Valley. The poet Edmund Spenser was married to a member of the family and it was to Nagle country that Edmund Burke was sent from Dublin at the age of six years to live with his uncle Patrick Nagle in Ballyduff at the foot of the Nagle Mountains. According to local tradition, he was returning to the place of his birth.

It is said that Edmund was sent to Cork for the sake of his health, as Dublin was an unhealthy place in the 18th century. However, it is probable that the opportunity to receive a Catholic education was of as much, if not more, importance. The penal laws of the time prohibited and penalised Catholic education, the presence of Catholic priests and attendance at mass, but while the code was strongly enforced in Dublin, places like Ballyduff in the parish of Killavullen in the 1730s were openly Catholic. Edmund attended a hedge school under the walls of the ruined castle of Monanimy, formerly a Nagle stronghold. The Blackwater Valley was and is one of the most beautiful regions in Ireland and is where Edmund Spenser drew inspiration for the landscape of The Faerie Queene. Burke stayed in north Cork until the age of 11 years, immersed in a culture far removed from that of Dublin and the Pale.

Elected to the British Parliament in December 1765, out of public necessity Burke played down both his Irishness and his Catholic associations. His political ideology, inspired by his experiences in Ireland, were to extend out into the world and, particularly, to America. He abhorred slavery and argued against seating representative Americans in the British Parliament on the grounds that this would mean the seating of slave-owners. The cry of "no taxation without representation" had been raised as part of American resistance to the Stamp Act, and allowing American representation in the British Parliament was one proposed solution. Historians claim a distinct link between his views on slavery and his formative years in an Irish Catholic hedge school pursing a forbidden education. As a respected parliamentarian, Burke tried during the early phases of pre-revolution in the American colonies to persuade the English not to provoke the Americans into rebellion by taxation, but rather to extend their rights and independence. Burke's repeated warnings were not heeded and the war that ensued was, in Burke's mind, a civil war.

The Blackwater Valley region in north County Cork has very strong connections with North America, going back to the first ever European settlement on the Continent. The settlement was organised by Sir Walter Raleigh, who owned land in the Blackwater Valley. On 9 April 1585, Sir Richard Grenville, landlord of Fermoy and a first cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh, set sail for America with 100 colonists in seven vessels. Among the organisers on board was the artist and cartographer John White, who had previously lived at Newtown, Doneraile. John White's watercolour drawings are of great significance in American history as they gave detailed visual information about the native North Americans and how they lived, along with excellent detail of the flora and fauna of the region. John White's granddaughter Virginia Dore, the daughter of John's daughter Eleanor Dore, was the first recorded European born on American soil, on 18 August 1587. Although much of White's work has been lost, a number of drawings were retained.

The potential for literary and cultural tourism in this country is enormous, and Edmund Burke is a pivotal figure in this respect. This is good for Ireland and complements the recent jobs initiative. I formally invite any member of the American visiting party to Edmund Burke's ancestral home. If time prevents this, I would be obliged if the Minister would be so good as to inform the President and his party of this unique link and association between our two nations.

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