THE GLOBAL Irish Economic Forum held in Farmleigh last year has transformed Ireland’s relationship with emigrants overseas and is assisting in our economic recovery, according to Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin.
Speaking at the weekend, Mr Martin said it was essential that Ireland valued and affirmed the validity of the sense of Irishness felt by people abroad.
Last year’s forum, which brought together major figures from the Irish diaspora, was regarded as a “significant and transformative” event which had delivered on its objectives and produced an upsurge in engagement between Ireland and the “global Irish”.
The lasting legacy of the forum would be the manner in which it generated a heightened level of awareness of the importance of this relationship, the Minister told a conference of global young leaders organised by The Ireland Funds, one of a number of follow-up events organised since the forum.
He told delegates that the Government had an economic plan and “the plan is working”.
The conference brought together 130-young leaders from the US and Ireland with backgrounds in business, academia and arts and focused on ways of expanding philanthropy among the next generation of the Irish diaspora.
Ireland Funds chairman, Hugo MacNeill, said Ireland had lost many of the economic advantages it had, and this made networking all the more important.
The organisation reported raising $7 million in grants and gifts to arts, social and community organisations in the first half of this year.
Also at the weekend, novelist Colm Tóibín received the 38th annual American Ireland Fund literary award. Mr Tóibín, who last week was awarded an honorary doctorate by UCD as well as attending a civic reception in his honour in his native Enniscorthy, received a bursary of $25,000 at a dinner in the National Gallery.
Meanwhile, the US economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Declan Kelly, has announced that over a dozen leading US corporations have agreed to participate in the US-NI Mentorship Program launched by his office in partnership with the American Ireland Fund and the Northern Ireland Science Park.
The mentorship program is designed to provide young people from across Northern Ireland with the opportunity to spend one year working full-time in a corporate environment with a leading US company.
