French and Irish celebrate annual Wild Geese Ball

Two hundred French and Irish people attended the 16th annual "Wild Geese Ball" at the Pavillon Gabriel, across the street from the French presidential palace, on Saturday night.

The annual function is hosted by the Ireland Fund de France on the weekend of the France-Ireland rugby match and alternates between Dublin and Paris.

Kingsley Aikins, chief executive and president of the Ireland Funds worldwide - which has raised more than a quarter of a billion euro for Irish charities - gave a short, humorous speech. He claimed he'd read an advertisement in the Irish Farmers Journal saying, "Wanted for marriage: young woman with two tickets for Rugby World Cup match. Please send photograph of the tickets."

Saturday's ball raised close to €60,000 for scholarships for Irish students in France, French students in Ireland, the Centre Culturel Irlandais and the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund, which is co-administered by Pat Hume and Daphne Trimble and helps victims from both sides in the North.

Sir Anthony O'Reilly, who founded the Ireland Funds in 1976, was detained in the US and did not attend. Neither did governor of the Bank of Ireland Richard Burrows, who was scheduled to have addressed the gathering and to have received the fund's Wild Geese award.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and at least four Government Ministers who had attended the match the previous evening, and the re-inauguration of the old library in the Irish College, returned to Dublin earlier in the day.

President of the Ireland Fund de France Pierre Joannon and Ambassador Anne Anderson officiated.

It was the last of a series of Rugby World Cup-related engagements for the Ambassador, who organised a dinner in Bordeaux, three receptions and an open house in Paris over the past two weeks, as well as accompanying the Taoiseach throughout his two-day visit.

Guests at the ball dined on smoked salmon, veal, coulommiers cheese with truffle sauce, champagne sorbet and raspberry truffle, and consumed many bottles of Sancerre, Pomerol and champagne. Each was given a small paperback entitled Irish, I Presume, summarising the lives of famous Irish emigrants. The last revellers left at 2.30am yesterday.

Mr Joannon quoted Jean-Pierre Rives, the legendary French rugby champion who was 34 times the captain of the French team: "Had I not been French, I would have definitely liked to have been Irish."