Boston’s ‘Connemara’ Mayor is set for real Galway homecoming

Martin J. Walsh is a Connemara man in everything but place of birth – and the next week will show how strongly the 48th Mayor of Boston is embedded in his Galway roots.

“It’s who I am” Mayor Walsh has said. “It is my heritage”. And so he returns in triumph to the birth place of his parentsthis Friday where he will be welcomed as a native son.

And in a week of high emotions and celebration in Connemara, history itself will come into focus.

For joining Mayor Walsh in Carna as he lays the foundation stone for the Emigrants and Diaspora Centre will be former Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, who will be retracing his footsteps back to the spot where he went to school all of 84 years ago.

The old hall, which is to be incorporated into the Emigrants Commemorative Centre, was formerly a boy’s school opened in 1887.

Liam Cosgrave and his brother Michael spent some months at school there in 1930; their father, W.T. Cosgrave, then President of the Irish Free State, wanted his two sons to get a grasp of native Irish.

They enrolled in March of 1930 and trooped to school with the local lads, sods of turf in hand and sometimes barefoot in the fashion of the times.

Liam Cosgrave and his daughter, Mary, confirmed this week that they will be making the journey back to Carna – and revisiting the former Taoiseach’s childhood – as the old school building takes on a new lease of life for the future.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.