Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A lifetime ago I, like many other Irish people, headed off to Chicago. I was not even 21 years of age and I was very excited. I thought I was a bit of a trailblazer setting foot in Chicago. Within a few days I saw the reality of life. I went to a bar and almost everyone in the bar was not just from Donegal but from the Inishowen Peninsula. Everyone. You could have taken a bar in my home town of Buncrana or anywhere on the Inishowen Peninsula and planted it there in southside Chicago. People had just followed the trail for work. Ireland is the only country in the world where our population is lower today than it was in the 1800s. It is the history of emigration. There was a book by Raymond Crotty in the mid-1980s called Ireland in Crisis. In the book he said that since the foundation of the State, up until that point in the mid-1980s which was about 65 years, half of the children who had survived childhood - not just those who had been born - had been forced to emigrate. That is the history and the Minister knows it. He refers to his own family living in various parts of the world.

Gabriel Byrne, the actor, nailed this issue a few years ago when we set up the Global Irish initiative in response to the crisis. We once again reached out to the diaspora to act as agents and facilitators for investment into the State to help us through the crisis. Gabriel Byrne said that the Irish people overseas were tired of the hat being passed around for the old sod. They need to see more than the pats on the back, the shamrocks and the St. Patrick's Day visits to march down the road and do walkabouts. They need something tangible and they need to have a real relationship with the country that they love. The Minister knows this. He has been abroad and he has met the Irish abroad. They have a closer sense of their Irishness than many of us here because they do not take it for granted. They hold onto their music, their song and their identity with a passion that is inspirational. We can see this in Canada, Australia, the United States, Europe, Britain and everywhere the Irish are. There is a huge connection. Today we are talking about the vote in the presidential election. I agree with Senator McDowell in his assessment of the role of the President within the Constitution. The President certainly does not have all of the executive powers. The vote is not for a Government or TDs; the vote would be for a President who articulates the views of the Irish. Consider Mary McAleese, Mary Robinson or Michael D. Higgins. I am proud of all three, they have done our State proud and they have been real ambassadors for our nation. Imagine if we had a president who was directly elected. Imagine the connection with the diaspora who love their country and who have passed the hat around for the old sod again and again. I was trying to pull my thoughts together and Gabriel Byrne's words were burned into my mind. I looked back to my young self at the age of 21 in Chicago among all of those Irish people. My first encounter was with the people from Inishowen and the west of Ireland.

In recent times the emigration train has set off again. We know from the CSO figures that Donegal was one of only three counties in which the population actually declined over the last period. There are villages and towns all over my county like this. It is heartbreaking. People are on Skype talking to their children and their grandchildren. In many cases they will not see each other for years. This motion offers a practical opportunity. I am not going to get into the fight with the Minister today. I agree with Senator Gavan that the Minister is a good man who sets out to do things. So do it and grapple with the situation.