LAST UPDATE | 30 Dec 2021

THE BILL CLINTON statue in Ballybunion owes its origins to an off-hand suggestion made by Dick Spring at Clinton’s holiday home in Martha’s Vineyard. 

The former US President has golfed in town’s famous course on several occasions, with international media descending on the Kerry seaside spot on the first such occasion in 1998. 

The famous round of golf led to a statue of Clinton being erected in Ballybunion and a play was even written about the occasion. 

Spring, the then Labour leader and Tánaiste, joined Clinton on the links during that ’98 round but newly released State Papers show that the trip was four years in the making. 

Spring visited President Clinton on the Massachusetts island in September 1994, mere days after the Provisional IRA had announced its first lasting ceasefire.  

The “informal and extremely cordial” 50-minute chat centred on further moves Clinton could make to assist the Northern Ireland peace process. 

Notes of the meeting record that Clinton accepted “in principle” that he would visit Ireland the following year but said that he wanted to do it “at a time which is good for the process and good for me here”. 

He noted that Irish-Americans had been “dancing in the streets” following the ceasefire and were pushing for greater US involvement. 

Clinton had been instrumental in personally intervening to ensure that Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was granted a US visa the previous February, allowing Adams to meet with supporters of the republican movement in the US. 

The unclassified documents show that British officials had said there would be “hell to pay” if Adams was granted a visa but Clinton told Spring that the British “now think we did right” in allowing Adams into the country.  

Clinton added that he had previously told Taoiseach Albert Reynolds that the US “have been too tied to British views”. 

The Bill Clinton statue in Ballybunion. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The chat between Spring and Clinton focused on moves to increase US aid and investment in Northern Ireland to boost the economy there. 

This included the idea for an “International Fund for Ireland” that would involve both public and private investment into Northern Ireland.

Clinton told Spring that making the fund a joint public/private vehicle would be “an easier sell” for him in Congress because of cuts to US domestic programmes. 

In an exchange between the pair, Clinton joked that his golf game might determine the size of US taxpayer contribution: 

Spring: The journalists have been asking how much money I am looking for! That is not the purpose of our meeting. But if we set up a working group that would be a good idea.

Clinton: Fine.

Spring: I am not asking for two or three hundred million dollars!

Clinton: If I break 80 in golf you can have it!

When diplomat Sean O hUiginn suggested that Clinton should play an Irish course, Kerry-native Spring promised to send the President a book on Irish courses and added.

“Tom Watson plays regularly in Ireland at Ballybunion,” he added, with Clinton replaying that the Kerry links was indeed “a famous course”. 

Clinton did visit Ireland in 1995 but was unable to make the schedule round as he was forced to depart Ireland earlier than planned to visit US troops in Germany that were to fly to Bosnia. 

The US President pledged that he would return to play golf in Ballybunion again and that promised was kept in 1998.