Gareth O'Callaghan: Traditions matter but it's time we were honest about the St Patrick's Day trip

It’s expected Taoiseach Micheál Martin will bring up the case of Seamus Culleton when he sits down with US president Donald Trump in the White House for St Patrick’s Day.

“Nothing stirs the heart like liberty which is very much on our minds these days.”

Ronald Reagan spoke these words as he stood beside Garret Fitzgerald on St Patrick’s Day in 1986. Our taoiseach was making the annual visit to meet the president.

Reagan’s words harked back to the historic Anglo-Irish Agreement, which had been signed four months before. During the severe Irish recession of 1980-85, it’s estimated that one in seven young Irish left for America. They were different, difficult times.

The Irish economy was knackered, while the Reaganomics years were a boom time for those mostly undocumented who arrived on the east coast, to cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, looking for work.

They were travelling to the land of the free, hoping for a new life in a country that promised liberty and independence. Many of them were hard workers and harder drinkers. They were Irish, but not like the Irish emigrants of today.

The historic bond between the two countries was never so important since the Famine as it was in the 1980s. I watched Reagan speak those words as I sat in an Irish pub in Dorchester, Boston. I was visiting friends, contemplating a move.

Reagan’s sense of humour, his soft brogue, and his smile had an endearing charm that made him sound quintessentially Irish.

As I listened to him, he felt like one of ours. On St Patrick’s Day, he became the Irishman he had always yearned to be because of the roots he was so proud of. None of us cared much for American politics back then, we just felt that Reagan had our backs.

Roll on 40 years, and America is in the grip of tyranny, perpetuated by a man who is obsessed with control and who exercises power in an arbitrary and cruel way.

Democracy is going down a toilet right before our eyes. That sense of welcome that once greeted the Irish is gone, even in the most familiar locations

So, why is an honourable leader like Micheál Martin, who rightly condemns racism in all its forms, sitting down opposite a resolute racist on the day that honours our saintly missionary?

He’ll sit in the room where he shook hands with Barack Obama, alongside taoiseach Brian Cowen, on St Patrick’s Day 2010.

How can he ignore Trump’s behaviour towards the former president and first lady in recent days, when he posted a racist clip depicting them as apes?

The video preserves a racist theme often used by slave traders and more recently by white supremacists to dehumanise black people and justify lynchings.

Why is Micheál Martin meeting someone who has turned being crude and offensive into a vocation?

You can’t denounce racism in your own country and then sit down with a racist in his without calling him out.

Surely being passed over on our the actual day of our national feast last year in favour of Conor McGregor should be enough to put our Government off travelling. Not the case.

Support for Irish abroad

While 100,000 visitors pour into Ireland for St Patrick’s Day, for the first time ever, every one of our ministers will be banging their bodhráns and fiddling their jigs in locations all over the world, including Senegal and Guatemala. Eh, hang on. Where?

Yes, it’s true, a chuisle mo chroí. So dedicated are they to follow the flight of the earls, they’ll depart our green shores in search of pots of gold at the ends of rainbows.

They’ll be embarking on the annual peregrination to show support for the Irish abroad, while trumping up interest among foreign businesses in our cute little tax haven.

Begorrah, they’ll be listening out for the familiar lilt of the brogue as they press the flesh with ex-pats who left old Hibernia.

To be sure, if you’re Irish, they’ll find you — even in places that never heard of Tír na nÓg. Forget what’s really happening in this horrible world. Sláinte is táinte. You couldn’t make it up.

Irish people no longer emigrate to America out of desperation. Those days are long gone. We need to stop thanking them for gifting us a better existence. Our Government’s sycophantic charade is long past its use-by date.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin and his wife Mary O'Shea with US president Donald Trump during the St Patrick's Day reception and shamrock ceremony in the the East Room of the White House, in Washington DC, as part of his week long visit to the US. last year.

We’re told these annual trips are a vital diplomatic exercise to promote Irish interests abroad. Irish interest abroad right now is on the plight of Seamus Culleton from Glenmore, Kilkenny, who has been detained by ICE in El Paso, Texas, since last September. Culleton lives with his American wife and runs a plastering business in Boston. He was arrested outside a Home Depot, and is now at risk of deportation.

How can you gift a bowl of shamrock to a man who permits federal agents to shoot on sight, or randomly lift people off the street because of their skin colour or nationality and lock them up indefinitely without recourse to justice?

It’s expected the Taoiseach might bring up Culleton’s case with Trump when he visits the White House. Why can’t he pick up the phone and talk to the president now? Push that bowl of shamrock aside. What about the Epstein files?

Garda sources said last week they will not be investigating claims by a woman who says she was trafficked to Ireland as a 13-year-old for sexual exploitation by “politicians and notable men”. What about the 2.5m files that have not been released?

The year before Reagan accepted the bowl of shamrock from Fitzgerald, Trump had just bought Mar-a-Lago and he met Epstein. Four years later, they went to Trump’s casino in Atlantic City accompanied by young women — one of whom was underage, according to then casino president Jack O’Connell.

Trump flew in Epstein’s private jets four times in 1993, according to flight logs made public during Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. In fact, he regularly flew on Epstein’s planes throughout the 1990s.

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when Maxwell recruited her to work as Epstein’s personal masseuse. Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, details her shocking exploitation at the hands of Epstein and the impact the abuse had on her.

On St Patrick’s Day, Micheál Martin will meet the man whose name appeared circled in Epstein’s “little black book” containing details of 1,571 personal contacts, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Michael Jackson. 

Emerging evidence this week is now linking him to Putin

When Epstein was arrested in 2019, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

Traditions matter more than ever these days, but isn’t it time we were honest with ourselves? Some traditions continue because no one questions their current value. What if the tradition is now merely a distraction or a diversion?

Over the years, taoisigh carried the prayers and sentiments of families across the Atlantic to homesick emigrants who bawled their eyes out when Makem and Clancy sang The Banks in Carnegie Hall on St Patrick’s night.

Now when the Taoiseach visits the White House, it’s like watching Donald Trump in The Apprentice. Like the bowl of shamrock, annual traditions of corned beef, cabbage, and leprechauns drinking green beer are nothing more than outdated schmaltz.

But traditions can blind us to bigger issues — even to the elephant in the room. Nothing stirs the heart like liberty, especially when a corrupt billionaire who once hung out with Jeffrey Epstein is calling the shots.