Irish Ambassador Michael Collins spoke to University community members in the Rotunda Dome Room yesterday afternoon about Ireland's weakened economy, which state leaders hope will improve through reduced deficit spending.
He opened the talk by emphasizing the connection between Ireland and the University, and addressed Thomas Jefferson's influence on Ireland.
"Jefferson never had [an] opportunity to travel to Ireland, but his ideas did," Collins said. "The museum at Monticello reminds us of the Declaration of Independence, which had a great influence on our own 1960 declaration."
Collins said Americans constitute 40 million of the 60 million people worldwide who claim a familial connection to Ireland, making the relationship between the two nations like a "global family."
Collins also discussed his hope for Ireland's economic progress in the next year.
"This year is for stabilization," Collins said. "The talk is about recovery, but the road ahead is quite long and very narrow, but we hope that we have come through the worst."
Ireland's unemployment rate is currently 14 percent, which is an increase from the country's low 4.3 percent rate from 2006 to 2007.
Collins said a large amount of Ireland's youth recently immigrated to Canada and Australia in search of job opportunities.
"This is something we hope is a short-term phenomenon because we don't want to lose any of our young people, and we hope that they will return to Ireland with new skills and knowledge," he said.
He said potential future foreign investment could prove "vital" to reviving the Irish economy in the same way Irish investment in the U.S. once helped create 80,000 American jobs.
Collins said he was "entirely confident that [Ireland] will succeed... [and] continue to grow again, [and] that the relationship with the U.S. will be a vital part of what Ireland is and wants to be."
While discussing the domestic situation in Ireland, Collins also said he was "gratified to say that Ireland enjoys peace in northern Ireland in a way that previous generations could never imagine."
Collins is the 16th Irish ambassador to the U.S. since 1924. He began his term Sept. 2007.
The Office of the Vice Provost for International Programs and the Center for International Studies sponsored the event.
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