Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad to get the opportunity to speak to this very important Bill before us. I thank Deputy Brophy for putting this Bill together to ensure the people who died so tragically at that time are at least commemorated once per year. It is very important to do that because if we do not know how we got here, we certainly do not know where we are going.

As a contractor I have been into practically every farm in Kilgarvan and the neighbouring parishes and I have often stood in amazement looking at the ridges that people worked at with their bare hands. Those ridges are there because they were never dug out, with the potato crop failing at the time. It was a different set-up for me on a machine working and it is hard to understand how those people existed and what they went through to turn these little ridges, only to find the gardens did not grow. They had to leave them behind and, in many cases, starve because they did not have potatoes to feed themselves or their families.

It must be remembered that there was plenty of grain and beet exported from this country to pay the landlords' rent in England. That was very unfortunate and unfair on the people who came before us as they had to watch all that going on while they could not get enough food for themselves in those very bad times to feed their families. I have a story from that time as I had a grandmother, who lived to be 97 and who died in 1993, who used to tell me that one of her grandmother's children died while being born at the time of the Famine. I have that little story from the Famine but it was so sad that so many people starved with the hunger and perished with disease. Many of them met a watery grave trying to get out of here and across to America in the coffin ships. When they could not stay alive they were thrown into the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Many people are suffering in our country today because of hunger or they have no homes. It is very sad to see that happening again. I say to today's Government, why do we not do what the Germans did? They did not finish paying loans they owed for the First World War until three or four years ago. They are demanding the money they gave out at 0.5% in the early 2000s be returned to them at 6% or 7%. What is going on is totally unfair and unneeded. We should stand together to demand that these loan repayments be put out over a longer period. As fellows say to me when they owe me, I should be satisfied that they will pay when they have the money. Those people in Europe should be satisfied for us to say we will pay when we have it. We should not let our people suffer in hospitals or on waiting lists because they cannot get into hospital for operations. We should stand together and make them wait for their money.

The Famine changed the face of Ireland forever. People existed between the rocks and the bogs, with small gardens to feed their families. They had to emigrate or die and there is no sign of them except in many instances the ridges that remain. They are little mounds of earth around the hills that were left behind when gardens did not grow and the potato crop failed. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. We should not let the same happen to the people we are in charge of now and who look up to us. We should try to do better and make these fellows in Europe or the banks who demand the money wait for it.

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