Sir, We were an elderly couple, one of the 150,000 such, bidding farewell to a loved one, sadly on her way back into exile. In the harrowing mass grief, all around us, we saw something of the obverse of President Robinson's roseate black tie, Waldorf Astoria, Dorchester Hotel expatriate Irish diaspora, those well prepared for it by their elitist education and professional status in our unjust society.
In the pent up love, pain and tear stained faces of those leaving and those of us left behind etched in all its human reality, was "our" diaspora, those of us with little else but our bare hands driven into exile by hunger, joblessness and poverty. We are among the Irish second highest ethnic group, sleeping rough in London's cardboard city, in the prisons, the jails, the mental hospitals, the alcoholic wards, the brothels the kitchens of cheap labour hotels, the building sites, the dole queues, and skid rows of the world, too poor to come home for Christmas.
It is said that, with our fertility rate, our population should be between 11 and 14 million. Who cares for those millions of us dumped on the charity of the nations of the world? "You had to come here to be fed, Paddy".
For those of us who have survived the cynical ethnic cleansing of the last 70 years by a succession of political leaders, there is that same small, self indulgent, post colonial wealthy millionaire, first generation peasant, propertied, privileged few families, unconcerned for the tens of thousands of our unemployed fellow citizens, their children, their elderly dependents. At least one third of our people live below the poverty line, and go to bed hungry every night. What a shameful mockery for those of "dour" diaspora is our free egalitarian, independent democratic Republic.
May one grieving Irish family among those bidding farewell and those left behind, tell our roving President her fatuous low watt low powered, "cheapest available, warmly welcoming electrical" candle in her window brought no comfort to our diaspora and could now, permanently, be switched off. Yours, etc.. Cloughmore South, Ballyvahoun, Co Galway.