Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have this brief opportunity to speak in support of Deputy Brophy's National Famine Commemoration Day Bill 2017. The Bill is almost an exact replica of an earlier Sinn Féin Bill, the Famine Memorial Day Bill 2016, which also called for the setting up of a national day of commemoration on the second Sunday of May each year.

It is quite shocking, when one thinks about it, that we do not have a set, national day of commemoration to mark the greatest tragedy ever to befall our people, an Gorta Mór, when 1 million people perished, another 1 million fled our shores. Continuing into the early 1850s, a total of 2 million or 2.5 million fled the country and gave rise to the Irish diaspora. We did have famines before then, in the 1740s and so on. The timing and the incredible horror of the events of the 1840s marked a truly iconic watershed in our history.

When I first studied history in UCD under Professors Art Cosgrove and Dudley Edwards, I was asked to read James Connolly's Labour in Irish History. Connolly made a brilliant analysis of the vicious landlord and capitalist system which created the terrible social conditions that facilitated and led to the Famine, aspects of which Deputy Boyd Barrett has referred to. Since studying the Famine as a student, I have had a revulsion for the British Liberal Party despite the later efforts of W.E. Gladstone to deliver Home Rule during the Parnell period. It was Lord John Russell and the Whigs, the Liberals' predecessors, who absolutely refused to address the starving hundreds of thousands of our ancestors in the terrible winter of 1846-1847 and in 1848 and 1849 and put their trust in the so-called invisible hand of Adam Smith. Even Sir Robert Peel and the Tories, as viciously landlord and Unionist as they were at the time - had, at least up to 1846, purchased corn, although we did not eat it, and set up some basic mechanisms to try to address the Famine. The Tories and the Whig Government of Russell failed completely to take care of our starving nation as they would have addressed such a problem had it been in Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Northumbria or even Wales or Scotland. They treated us fundamentally differently.

Even the response to the rampant disease which took away so many tens of thousands of our ancestors and affected the poorest families across the west, the south and the midlands was appalling, particularly in view of the fact that the United Kingdom was the greatest power on the planet at that time, that significant parts of the map were covered in red and that it possessed an empire on which the sun never set. Following the sectarian carnage inflicted on our people by the land-owning ruling Unionist caste in the 1798 war that lasted into the early part of the 19th century - a war similar to those in the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East - the Famine marked a clear dividing line whereby Ireland had to become an independent nation outside Britain. The ferocious determination of James Stephens and his successors down to Thomas Clarke, the real originator of the 1916 Rising, the IRB, of Michael Davitt and the Land League and Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party all flowed from that appalling event.

I believe a memorial day for this Irish holocaust would be entirely fitting as it would allow us to remember more than 1 million of our people who died tragically and 2 million people who fled this country to safety in the US, Australia and Britain. It could be argued that the latter figure later increased to 6.5 million, 7 million or 8 million. Such a memorial day would give us an opportunity to remind ourselves that never again should our nation be in thrall to outside powers who do not give a damn whether our people live or die. That is a particularly relevant sentiment at this time of Brexit. Other Deputies referred to the importance of our diaspora. The reasoning set out by Deputy Brophy for this Bill echoes some of the sentiments expressed by Deputy Tóibín of Sinn Féin last year and again today. It is important we acknowledge the historical significance of the Great Famine in our history. We need to allow for the greater integration of this annual commemoration into school curriculums. The diaspora must also be integrated. I welcome the Bill. It would be fitting to have a memorial day on the same day each year.

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