Ms Linda Ervine:

Tá sibh ró-chineálta. You are too kind. Tá mé overwhelmed. Is onóir mhór dom a bheith anseo. I said to my husband Brian on our way down that I remember him bringing me to Dublin the first time. It must be about 18 years ago. To come here today in this respect - as Senator Ó Donnghaile said, we are from a few streets away from each other; I come from a back street in east Belfast and it is such a great honour to be here.

Is Éireannach mé. I have never been anything else but that and I will always be that. No matter if anyone tries to tell me that I am not. Is Briotanach mé fosta ach is Éireannach mé ar dtús. I shared this with someone earlier on. My grandfather on my father’s side was a man from outside London who came here in the 1930s and married my nanny. The reason we knew we were Irish was not because anybody ever sat us down and told us that but because he was a bloody Englishman. We knew we were right because we were Irish and he was wrong. On my mother’s side, my grandmother was Kathleen Kelly, a Catholic woman from Clifton Street, who married a Presbyterian man with a very Irish name. We are not one thing or the other. We share this island. This island and the language are part of us. I am so fortunate to have met the language and to have got the chance to be ag streachailt leis an teanga. Tá sé ag éirí níos fearr ach tá sé iontach fadálach. To the Senators who apologise for their Irish, there is no apology needed. I do not apologise. I am just glad that I am learning it. What started just over ten years ago, I am now in my second year of my degree. I may never be líofa - I do not know - but the turas, the journey, is wonderful. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.