Famine commemoration committee to meet today

An expert group set up to consider ways to commemorate the Irish Famine will hold its inaugural meeting today.

The National Famine Commemoration Committee, established by Community Affairs Minister Eamon O Cuiv, will decide how to mark the official Famine Memorial Day.

It will be the first time the forgotten victims of the Irish Famine are to be remembered in an annual official memorial day.

The catastrophic failure of the potato crop in the 1840s led to the death by starvation of one million people while hundreds of thousands emigrated, sparking a worldwide Irish diaspora.

The devastating natural disaster left a lasting social and political legacy on modern Ireland.

Ireland’s population, which exceeded eight million in the Census of 1841, was reduced by approximately 1.5 million through death and emigration. Only 10 years later, the 1851 Census recorded a population of only 6.5 million.

The Famine resulted in large Irish communities settling in countries like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and was also blamed for the decline of the Irish language.

After the inaugural meeting, Mr O Cuiv – who is a grandson of former Taoiseach and President Eamon De Valera – and Minister of State John Curran will announce members of the National Famine Commemoration Committee.

The committee is expected to include historians, Irish language experts and NGO representatives. The proposed Famine Memorial Day is a major victory for the Dublin-based Committee for the Commemoration of Irish Famine Victims, which has run a lobbying campaign for five years.

Taxi driver Michael Blanch, who set up the Committee, first held a commemoration in central Dublin in 2003 when only he and his wife Betty attended.

The Committee has since held an annual procession from the capital’s Garden of Remembrance to Famine sculptures on the banks of the River Liffey.