WASHINGTON:TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny began his official visit to Washington yesterday amid heightened speculation that US president Barack Obama will announce a May visit to Ireland today.
“There’s no one as Irish as Barack Obama,” Mr Kenny said, reminding his audience at the American Ireland Fund gala last night that he would today “meet for the first time the man whose family, in the 1800s, moved from Co Offaly to Deerfield in Ohio”.
Mr Kenny said earlier at a lunch for business leaders that he would renew his invitation to Mr Obama. “And if he comes, he will be assured of a real Irish welcome that will no doubt fortify him in the challenges he faces as the leader of the free world.”
Members of Mr Kenny’s entourage and Irish diplomats swore they really did not know yet of any planned visit. It was still up in the air, one source said. The complication was to ensure that Mr Obama’s visit not occur too close in time to that of Queen Elizabeth.
“First the Queen, then Obama,” predicted a businessman who attended the morning session with the Taoiseach. “I’ve been told to keep the last two weeks of May free,” said another.
At the lunch, 200 business people gave Mr Kenny a long and heartfelt standing ovation after his speech on the three Rs of “recovery, renewal and restoration”.
Criticism of the previous government was implicit in his admission that: “We do face tough times. Many have been shaken, heartbroken.” But the institutions which Mr Kenny reached out to yesterday – the Taoiseach’s Economic Advisory Board, the Global Irish Network and Culture Ireland – were inherited from his predecessor.
“One of the smartest moves the last government made was to create Culture Ireland,” said Mary Apied, president of the Trinity Foundation. Ireland’s culture was a theme to which Mr Kenny returned repeatedly.
“We are a people . . . who have reinvented ourselves better, brighter, faster than any other over the centuries,” he said. “We did so through our own imagining. Often, creating out of sheer nothingness, something that can be seen and heard and felt in our writing and our stories, in our songs and our music, in our dramas of the stage and screen.”
Mr Kenny received rave reviews from the 50 members of the economic board who brainstormed with him in the morning. “He’s very impressive. Energetic, engaged, focused and receptive to ideas and suggestions,” said James Quinn, the chief executive of Tiffany jewellers.
Participants noticed that the Taoiseach listened carefully, took notes and remembered names. “He handled a really solid briefing in a very professional way,” said Loretta Brennan Glucksman, the philanthropist and chairwoman of the American Ireland Fund. “He took tough questions and answered in specifics.”
In a departure from the usual St Patrick’s week schedule, Mr Kenny met the US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner late yesterday, at the latter’s invitation. Asked whether Mr Geithner could offer concrete help to Ireland, Mr Kenny alluded to the US official’s sway over the IMF, saying the IMF “have already signalled that there should be a reduction in interest rates. That’s actually been confirmed in the conclusions of the euro zone meetings last week and translated into effect . . . for Greece.”
Mr Kenny said Mr Geithner “has an influential voice here, in realising that the new Government in Ireland are serious about living up to our responsibilities, and about moving on for the bigger picture of where we want to be in five or 10 years”.
Mr Kenny concluded his keynote address to the American Ireland Fund gala last night with a vibrant appeal. “Support us, mentor us, partner us, praise us, publicise us, mind us, look out for us,” he said. “Most of all, believe us. Believe in us. Trust us. We will do what is necessary to recover, painful as it might be.”