Michael D delivers King’s Speech fit for a President

Date Published: 02-Nov-2011

It was a homecoming reception fit for a king – followed by a speech that would have done justice to that Oscar-winning movie. And it most of all, was Galway’s chance to acclaim Michael D, before we loaned him out to the rest of the country.

They had turned up in their thousands on a Sunday afternoon – old Labour and old Galway mixing with newer converts and small children – as they waited for the arrival of the people’s choice for the Presidency.

And then he arrived, led from City Hall by St Patrick’s Brass Band, welcomed by his long-time friend and colleague and fellow UCG alumnus Tanaiste Éamon Gilmore, along with the city’s Mayor Cllr Hildegarde Naughton, his local campaign manager and Dáil successor Derek Nolan, Labour Cllrs Niall McNeilis and Catherine Connolly, and so many others like Peter Kenny who had played their part in his earlier successes.

UCG – or NUI Galway as it is now – can also bask with some pride this week, now that it has a clean sweep of alumni at the helm, with the President, Taoiseach, Tanaiste and even the Attorney General all gaining their third-level education there.

But this was about the man who spent so much of his life there as student and lecturer, and on Sunday the new President looked regal in the back of the state car, alongside his wife and greatest supporter Sabina before he emerged to be enveloped, first by media and then supporters, on the steps of the Meyrick Hotel.

There was an irony in the fact that Galway’s first President was making his homecoming address at the other end of Eyre Square from the spot where another President, JFK, had spoken so movingly on his visit in 1963.

This was a speech from the heart, not from a script, and he spoke of arriving in Galway at 19 to work as a clerk with the ESB in Newtownsmyth; he spoke of his College days as a student and lecturer, and he talked of his quarter century as a Dáil representative for Galway West.

He spoke of his hopes and his aspirations for an inclusive society, one that turned its back on the individualism that had blighted our land throughout the era of the Celtic Tiger – and he pointed to Galway as a role model for that evolution.

“Galway will always be in my heart and I know it is raining but I want to say this, it is my intention to turn language into reality – I will work for inclusive citizenship; I will celebrate and support a creative society, doing things from the strengths that we know that we have, based on the decencies that are always there in the hearts of Galway people,” he said.

See full story – and four pages of coverage – in this week’s Connacht Tribune.