History of famine in Ireland means we must lead to ensure food is not weaponised, says Taoiseach

Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the West Cork History Festival, with Professor Breandán Mac Suibhne, Dr Charles Read and Professor Melissa Fegan. August 2022

Ireland has a “moral obligation” to ensure that food is not weaponised in the war in Ukraine, given our historic experience of famine, the Taoiseach has said.

Speaking at the West Cork History Festival in Skibbereen at the weekend, Micheál Martin said that Ireland’s history was helping to form the Government’s approach to its role with the United Nations, and also referenced the need to take action amid the “potential calamity” facing people in the horn of Africa.

“We believe it is important that we take a lead on food security in Europe and the United Nations and that will be a constant in our international outlook, particularly in relation to the realisation of sustainable development goals to prevent famine,” he said.

Mr Martin’s comments came before an appeal from musician and activist Bob Geldof, who urged the Taoiseach to “speak loud and clear” on the issue and ensure development funding is not a casualty of funding cuts amid “horror” famines and “Putin’s filthy illegal murders”.

Invoking a famous letter sent to the London Times detailing the horrors of the Great Famine in the West Cork townland of South Reen, Mr Geldof said that some situations across the world today are as “intolerable to countenance” as those horrors from the 1840s.

Micheál Martin at the West Cork History Festival. August 2022

Ireland's lead

He said:  “But just as Ireland’s people and politicians have always led and spoken with clear historic justification to the horrors of famine, starvation and poverty so too now, as the world turns away from the poor and hungry to other closer concerns, Ireland must re-assert and re-double its efforts to insist at each and every forum on the primary need of the newly forgotten ones of our time.” 

His highlighting of the need to persist with development funding comes after the British government cut overseas aid spending earlier this year.

“As a country which has experienced such a traumatic event as famine”, Ireland was obliged to provide leadership against the weaponisation of food and would continue to do that at international level.

He said that Ukraine had a similarly catastrophic event in its history when millions died of famine in the 1930s, and he was reminded of this on his recent visit to Kyiv.

Micheál Martin at the West Cork History Festival with Simon Kingston and Victoria Kingston. August 2022

“They are still conscious of the Holodomor even in the midst of the war at the moment,” he said. “They took me a museum to the Holodomor and for them, it is very much a defining moment in their national consciousness and while it was a catastrophic event, it has brought about a strong sense of identity.” 

The Taoiseach said that Ireland was cognisant of realising the Sustainable Development Goals and "doing everything we can to prevent famine this year". 

Attendees at the in-person festival this weekend, which was also livestreamed, heard talks on a variety of topics including the worst year of the famine, dubbed Black ‘47, and the Bandon Valley killings in west Cork 100 years ago.