Mr. Richard Neal:

I thank the Cathaoirleach, Senator Mark Daly. I recognise the ambassador, H.E. Ms Cronin. She has been a terrific friend to Ireland and to me and to she represents America so well.

I thought it was remarkable, as I listened to the Senators courteous replies, that we are all still rowing the boat in the same direction. One of the hardest things in politics, as we all know, is to tell our most ardent friends and supporters that they are not going to get what they want right now. That is how the Good Friday Agreement was born. The hardest thing is to walk into a room and say, “Stay with us and we will get to where we want to be, even if the moment doesn't dictate how we will get there”. All sides did that to get to the Good Friday Agreement. As I travel to Belfast tomorrow, my mind will be on somebody else - Mary Ward, another grandmother who left Banbridge. What is unique about that life is that two left and four stayed. I will meet some of those relatives again tomorrow.The significance of her journey is this: she never returned home. When she said goodbye that day to her mother and father, whose graves I visited, that was the end of it. At the post office in Dublin, which was the busiest in the world, again because of the Irish people's regard for the printed word, her lesson was this: she could never return home for a wedding, a funeral, a first communion or a confirmation. It was writing that kept the memory alive. When I go up there tomorrow - and I remember what it was like to try to move through Newry to the North - she is going to be on my mind as well. Looking at the people from the Blasket Islands, the Dingle Peninsula, Banbridge, Roscommon and in between, the fact that all of you agree now on these issues makes our job so much easier as we speak with one voice. For what Mark and all you in the Seanad have done for me on this occasion, thank you from the United States of America.