“Every year on March 17th, Ireland marks its National Day, St Patrick’s Day. This year, like every other, provides a great opportunity to celebrate our successes and to connect with our diaspora and friends across the globe. Ireland for those less familiar with us, is a small island state off the coast of Europe. Last year we celebrated our 50th year of membership of the European Union. With a population of 5 million, we have a long history of emigration, which has resulted in an estimated 80 million people worldwide claiming some Irish descent, with for example more than 36 million Americans claiming Irish as their primary ethnicity.
Within our emigration story is tens of thousands of Irish Missionaries who over the past two centuries have worked tirelessly, mainly in the fields of education and health across the globe. Here in Sierra Leone our missionary presence dates back over 150 years and in my time here in Sierra Leone I have met countless people who have acknowledged and credited Irish Missionaries for their contribution to their education and health care. In particular, many Sierra Leonean’s may be familiar with Sr Teresa, who in 2024, celebrates her 70th year of service to this country. Through her order, the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, and through the transitions and challenges of independence, war, epidemics and pandemics, Sr Teresa has been a constant throughout in devoting herself to supporting women and girls and we are hugely proud to have her as part of our small diaspora here.
This year, the Irish Embassy too marks a less impressive but still an important milestone or anniversary, it is 10 years since the Irish Embassy opened here in Freetown and it is over twenty years since we started our development work in Sierra Leone.
We were delighted to have Kyle O’Sullivan, our Director for all of our Programming across Africa, join us last week as we move towards finalising our new five-year 2024-2028 Mission Strategy for Sierra Leone. We had a fruitful programme which included meetings with Chief Minister David Sengeh, Chairman Kandeh Yumkellah of the Presidential Initiative for Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Jiwoh Abdulai, Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Conrad Sackie and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Victoria Sulamani. We were honoured to engage with such high-level officials during our programme and we were delighted to take the opportunity to pledge our commitment and ongoing support to the development of Sierra Leone.
Our programmes are designed to maximise our contribution to achieving the ambitious target and goals as set out in the Government’s Medium Term Development Plan. We will be increasing our resources for delivering this over the coming five years and we will continue to have as our key focus the improvement of the lives of marginalised women and girls.
All of our development work across the various mentioned priority areas is delivered through Irish Aid, my government’s international development programme. Irish Aid marks 60 years of its existence this year. Our development programmes are consistently judged to be of a high quality and we have a strong reputation for our focus on reaching those left furthest behind in the countries that we partner with. We will continue to maintain the quality and integrity of our development programmes across the globe.
What many might not know, is that Ireland has been through its own development journey in recent history. Ireland’s own story includes experiences of famine, poverty and forced migration. Even the relative growth and prosperity we have enjoyed since joining the European Union in 1973 co-existed, at least until the 1990s, with conflict very close to home in Northern Ireland. These experiences have, to an obvious degree, shaped how we view the world around us today. And yet whatever resilience or empathy these experiences can engender within us – even that sense of eventually making our way through the most difficult of times – can be tested for all of us when we read or scroll news of our world in 2024.
Unfortunately, we are faced with realities of conflict, continuing in our European neighbourhood and also in the Middle East. Ireland has a clear and principled position on these conflicts. We have demanded accountability internationally for Russia’s illegal invasion and we are one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine’s path to EU membership. We condemned outright Hamas’s terrorist attack of the 7th October and we have called at every juncture for all hostages in Gaza to be released unconditionally. We have also strongly argued, since the early weeks of the conflict, for an upholding of international humanitarian law, a humanitarian ceasefire and for sustained humanitarian assistance to be provided for the over 2 million desperate civilians in Gaza. Protecting civilians in conflict – all civilians, everywhere – is our highest priority.
Amidst this instability and crisis’s, we are grateful to have a dependable and principled partner on the global stage through Sierra Leone’s membership of the UN Security Council. Sierra Leone has strongly and consistently demonstrated its support for the multilateral rules based order and the upholding of international humanitarian law, using its voice to enforce these messages. We look forward to the continuing leadership of Sierra Leone in this position, much like Ireland in its 2021-2022 term, as a relatively small state utilising its non-permanent membership status as effectively and strategically as possible. I wish Minister Kabba and his team here and in New York continued success in their membership of the UNSC during these challenging global times.
There is an old Irish saying: “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireannn na Daoine” – “We live in each other’s shadow”. Protecting and supporting each other, and building enduring partnerships, has never been more vital. It is our focus too this St. Patrick’s Day.”