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PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins and his wife Sabina will hold a special Covid-19 remembrance ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin today.
The event will honour everyone who died from Covid-19, those grieving the loss of their loved ones and frontline workers.
The Tánaiste, party leaders, the Lord Mayor of Dublin and a number of frontline workers from across the country will attend the ceremony.
As part of the ceremony, the President and Sabina will also plant an oak tree in the Commemorative Garden at Áras an Uachtaráin as a lasting memorial to victims of the pandemic.
Music will be performed by Iarla Ó Lionáird and Steve Cooney.
“Today is a very solemn occasion, at which we will give honour and hold in memory those we have lost, as well those who have suffered the absence of an opportunity for final moments shared and who could not release their grief,” President Higgins said in a statement.
“In doing so, we reflect on the more than 6,600 people who have died as a result of Covid-19 in this country over the past two years, their grieving families, and all those still suffering from Covid and its consequences.”
“Today we have to the forefront of our minds the more than half a million people in this country who lost loved ones during the pandemic, and all those, too, living abroad who have endured painful separation from loved ones at home in Ireland at times of great distress and grief.
“We recall how hard it was that there was no space for those normal expressions of grief that had to be curtailed because of the restrictions imposed, necessary as they were, to curtail the virus’s spread. We think too of those carers who had to forgo offering their care and visits to those they love,” the president added.
A number of commemorative ceremonies are taking place across the country today to remember those who died of Covid, including in Dublin, Kildare and Kilkenny.
Taoiseach’s statement
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was due to attend the ceremony in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin. However, due to testing positive for Covid-19 while visiting the White House in Washington, he will now miss the ceremony.
Despite not being able to attend in person, the Taoiseach has issued a statement to mark the national day of remembrance.
In the statement, Martin said the day is an important moment in Ireland’s effort to reflect on and come to terms with the trauma of the pandemic.
“It will be a poignant day for many, as we remember loved ones lost to the disease and as we remember all those others who passed away but couldn’t be grieved in the way we would have liked, or as they deserved,” he said.
“The loss is enormous and it is profound, but we will come to terms with it in the same way that we have come through every other stage of the pandemic – as a community, united and there for each other.
Martin said recognising Ireland’s “extraordinary spirit of solidarity” during the pandemic is another key aspect of what today is about.
“In every section of our society, people dug more deeply and showed more resilience than they knew was possible. Countless acts of personal courage and quiet sacrifice saw our country through an unprecedented crisis, and helped save many thousands of vulnerable lives,” he said.
Everyone played their part and did was what asked of them, but our healthcare workers in particular clearly deserve special thanks on this day of recognition.
Without hesitation and before we even understood the true nature or scale of the threat, they put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us. Without complaint, they cared for our sickest and brought dignity and compassion to the most fraught and difficult situations.
He also praised the delivery of the vaccine rollout across the country, calling it one of the most effective national vaccination programmes in the world.
He added that we do not yet know the full extent of the damage caused by Covid, acknowledging that many people are still struggling with the physical effects of the disease, while the wider social and psychological impact of what we have been through will take years to properly understand.
“But on this, our National Day of Remembrance and Recognition, we can and should take comfort and reassurance from the fact that no matter how bad it ever became, our national spirit held firm. Our communities remained united. We looked out for each other.
“While I am deeply disappointed not to be able to mark this moment in person with family, friends and colleagues, I know that the spirit of resilience that underpinned our great national effort over the last two years remains strong and it will see us through whatever challenges we face.”
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under no circumstances should he be handed to usa
@joe doyle: Why there they are supposed to be the good guys nothing will happen to him surely.
@joe doyle: He’s a dreadful individual he conned his friends into losing half a million when they put up his bail then did a runner, he’s a spy & and a traitor putting lives at risk he deserves never to see the light of day again.
@Joe Thorpe: He’s only guilty of telling the truth. Western domination would come tumbling down if that kind of honesty became common place – gotta crush him to make sure other journalists tow the party line.
This comment from @tom_fowdy on twitter is very apt.
“Western propaganda is based on the following principles:
1) We are morally superior and enlightened
2) X country is doing horrible things
3) We need to act and do something about it
And because of point 1, 2 and 3 concurrently are believed every single time.”
@Joe Thorpe:
You are badly linformed.
He has committed no crime. The Swedes have dropped the false rape charge which the US/USA were using to get him to the US, where he faced charges of treason for revealing the war crimes of the US/NATO warmongers.
Now he will be extradited to the US, where he will not get a fair trial and be either “suicided” or murdered slowly by solitary confinement and torture. Guantanamo still exists, there are prisioners there without trial for years.
The US have promised a fair trial and no restrictive measures against him. But if he contravenes any of the conditions of his imprisonment according to the head of the CIA, these guarantees will fall.
The same CIA which investigated assassinating Assange in the past.
@Joe Thorpe:
It is you who is a dreadful individual, what have you done for mankind except make silly remarks?
Julian Assange has more courage, brains and integrity than you had or will have.
Stop watching Sky New/reading the Sun or other British rubbish and try to get information from sources that are not British government mouthpieces.
That includes many Irish media.
Will they be handing over the diplomats wife?
@motojack: She will be under trial in the US and conclusion will be that motorcyclist caused the accident by driving on the wrong side of the road.
@motojack: That was the problem, she and her husband weren’t diplomats and didn’t have diplomatic immunity. I can understand how it can happen as I’ve driven in the US many times. Your natural tendency is to drive on the side you are used to, you really have to pay attention. Why she just didn’t stay and deal with it I don’t know, she probably would have been given a slap on the hand and a driving ban.
@Jim Buckley Barrett: not likely. She would have had to do time more than likely. Britain is draconian when it comes to road deaths or even crashes that are non fatal.
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Both she and her husband are intelligence agents and apparently pretty senior ones . The Americans are not going to allow people like that to be locked up.
@motojack:
No way! The Yanks never hand over their citizens, but expect other countries to do so. Usually the Brits trip themselves over to facilitate them.
Some years ago a US fighter plane flew UNDER the cables of a cabin taking skiers up a mountain in Italian, killing all on board.
The four US military were whipped out of Italy immediately, and never faced charges.
Julian Assange has killed nobody, he has merely exposed the hypocrisy and lies of the “Western” governments, including Ireland, and their war crimes.;
For this he is being punished, also to send a message to other journalists that the truth must not be let out, ever.
@Colin Conlan:
Brilliant!
Yet they won’t send Anne Sacoolas back for killing Harry Dunne and fleeing the country. Disgraceful double standards.
@Mark Brown: https://youtu.be/LVwby34mR6E?t=200
On the basis of ‘four light assurances from US authorities’… Oh yeah, like they have a good track record there.
Shocking and sad day for so called ‘Freedom of speech’ and ‘Democracy’…. And all at the hands of the 2 biggest so called ‘crusaders’ of the ‘free’ world
Freedom of speech is great, until you say what “they” don’t like.
@Kieran Woods: Freedom of speech is only to particular case of saying something irrelevant to a deaf audience. Everything else draws penalty by some law.
The rte website claims the case against Assange is because he “attempted to obtain and disclose national defence information” no mention that Assange actually made public war crimes by US in Iraq, rte is Orwellian to the core in their mastery of language for hiding relevant facts
Imagine he’s only crime was making govts look bad. Telling everyone the truth at what was going and govts all over the world were scrambling. At the end of the day what the US did was illegal and they committed mass murder in the middle east likewise as they had done in Vietnam and anyone who exposed them was the enemy.
There was a doc leaked where it showed the UK GCHQ were tapping all Ireland’s internet cables and harvesting all the private data so they could spy on Irish citizens. Somehow our govt was ok with that!
Lap-dog and Poodle come to mind.
He has severe mental health issues. This is a death sentence.
The objective here is to slowly drive Assange to complete breakdown, it will be dragged out over years to achieve this end, any pretence that the British judicial system is totally independent of the political establishment is farcical.
It will serve as a warning to any future whistleblowers what awaits them if they expose war crimes by any western nation.
The absolute craven attitude from the msm is hardly surprising, case gets coverage only from the legal proceedings point of view but no pressure from the media on politicians to protect whistleblowers that are doing the job the msm are not allowed to do, the EU with all their pretence about protecting human rights are about as silent in this matter as they are regards the war in Yemen and the butchering of a journalist by the Saudis, it’s easy speak out againts clowns like Lukashenko but not good oul uncle sam and buddies, a sad day for proper journalism and the rights of individuals against persecution by militaristic states.
It is easy now for UK to rule subjectively on what they want, as ECJ is out of the way.
Frightening and despicable. You think we live in an enlightened, free society in the West, but do something big enough the establishment doesn’t like and see what happens.
It will be interesting to see if the US adhere to their assurances … serving his sentence in Australia , for example…. that would be hard to swallow as he’s an arch enemy to their LEAs they want an example made of him , harsh sentence and incarceration , as if they hadn’t already done this already to others whistleblowers .
A disgraceful decision but also a totally predictable one. The timing during Biden’s Summit for Democracy is ironic seeing as Freedom of The Press is such a big part of that event.
And we still let state killers land in Shannon and head off to the middle east to indiscriminately murder men women and children.
Will the sht just hit the fan….. And the walls and got smeared.
Great news.
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