Moves to designate an annual memorial day for victims of the Famine moved a step closer today after today Dublin City Council voted to approve the idea.
The council unanimously carried a Labour Party motion to officially mark the 19th Century collapse of the potato crop which killed one million people and forced hundreds of thousands to emigrate.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte has also tabled a parliamentary question on the issue which will be taken by Arts Minister John O'Donoghue in the Dail next week.
Cllr Dermot Lacey, who proposed the motion to the City Council, said: "Every household in Ireland has ancestors who died in the Famine and the memorial day is a fitting tribute to them all."
The Committee For The Commemoration Of Irish Famine Victims is to lead its annual procession from Dublin's Garden of Remembrance to the Famine Memorial on Custom House Quay on Sunday.
The group is also calling on people across Ireland as well as emigrants living abroad to observe a minute's silence at 2pm on that day.
Committee chairman Michael Blanch said: "The Famine only happened three generations ago and the victims were both Catholic and Protestant, so any commemoration can build bridges between the two communities."
The committee envisages that the memorial day would also be a gesture of solidarity towards all people around the world who have suffered in famines.
The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has previously suggested that the Famine could be incorporated into the National Day of Commemoration — an annual ceremony to mark Ireland's war dead.
But the committee said this occasion specifically remembered dead Irish soldiers, and not civilians which comprised the Famine victims.