Chamber president Bill McLaughlin, left, Irish Ambassador Noel Fahy, and Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali at the farewell luncheon for the ambassador at the Union League.
One thing he discovered about Americans in his five years as Irish ambassador to the United States, Noel Fahy told a group of Philadelphia business leaders last week, is that they’re doers, not whiners.
“In Europe, we see a problem and say, oh my, that’s a very big problem,” he told the delighted crowd at the Union League in Philadelphia. “Americans see a problem and they genuinely try to solve it.
“I know that America has been criticized about Iraq, but beyond that criticism, we still look at all the contributions the United States has made to the world, to Ireland.”
Technically, the luncheon given in his honor was a farewell party from the Irish-American Chamber and Business Network, a non-profit membership organization in Philadelphia that promotes the development of economic, commercial, financial and educational relationships between the United States and Ireland. Fahy was recently named Ireland’s ambassador to the Vatican. But in his goodbye speech, Fahy waxed more patriotic than many Americans about the place that was his home for half a decade.
“The US role in the new shared government in Northern Ireland was crucial,” he said. In fact, former US Senator George Mitchell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999 for the pivotal role he played in convincing Protestant and Catholic leaders to sign what is known as The Good Friday Accord, which paved the way for peace in the war-ravaged North.
“The US government and private American groups have contributed nearly $1 billion for reconciliation projects in Northern Ireland. President Clinton was there when we needed him, and in the run up to the final stages in March, President Bush did make some phone calls,” said Fahy.
As a parting gift, Chamber President Bill McLaughlin gave Fahy a bound copy of the manuscript of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” from the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, which houses an original. Accepting the two-book set, Fahy joked, “I don’t know if I’ll have time in the Vatican to enjoy ‘Ulysses’ for the second time.”
