Mary Robinson

How was this received in Dublin and around the country when it was delivered?

Oh, really? Well, I mean, Bertie Ahern and Mary Robinson, both in the same year, 1995, she was the president at the time, both had called for a United Kingdom recognition of the responsibility.

I think the word apology was occasionally used, but it was more a recognition of apology.

And Bertie actually wrote a long commendation of the apology in the Irish Times three days later, which got a lot of airplay.

But at least Bill had provided a video clip of him talking about the famine.

So that was there.

Mary Robinson was representing us in Ireland.

But it was Gabrielle Byrne, the actor, who read out Tony Blair's 225 words.

Okay, great.

What, what happened was a few weeks back, I was watching television, and Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for, uh, Human Rights Violation, was on, and she said that they were gonna, the UN was gonna, uh, actually, the Commission for the, uh, Abuses of, you know, Criminal War or whatever you wanna call it, "We're gonna look at both sides of the case with an equal eye." Well, when I heard this, I started calling Mary Robinson's office saying, "I don't think people should be cluster bombed in their neighborhoods, and the cluster bombing of civilians was pretty horrific, and, uh, I think that, uh, the NATO, uh, people should be prosecuted, and since I'm an American, I think we should start with Bill Clinton." And so I've just been continuing on with this same thing, trying to find, uh, other...

But maybe you can explain it a little bit better than I can.

But basically, what I've been doing is calling their number and saying, "Look, as an American citizen, I'm disgusted that my government would be involved in atrocities and genocide of a civilian people at a time of war, and I don't think the cluster bombings neighborhoods and killing, uh, civilian, uh, television people at the Serbian TV and destroying the infrastructure and civilian and water towers and waterworks and polluting the Danube River is what I, I think should be done.

And you're probably going to build better relationships with your consumers anyway, if that's how you communicate.

Ireland currently we're on our third female president and Mary Robinson is the founder of the Dandelion Project.

And she is a globally recognised speaker when it comes to climate issues.

And given that I'm speaking to another globally recognised speaker on these topics and that you are that you happen to be a woman.

The NGO forum's final declaration branded Israel a racist apartheid state guilty of genocide and called for its complete isolation.

Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, declined to recommend it to the governmental conference.

And on September third, the United States and Israel walked out.

I have read Joelle's diary many times.

Big Galway fan.

Big Galway fan, as was Michael D. Higgins before her, as was Mary McAleese before him, as was Mary Robinson before her.

Fascinating.

This has never happened before.

I think there's other people who are leaders and you don't see their results on a spreadsheet.

And this was a topic you had recently was about former presidents of Ireland who had been, I think Mary Robinson was a leader.

She

certainly broke the mould.

I think our most recent president, Michael Dee, also, he created tensions, I'm sure, with his minders and the government and all of that.

But he only ever did it for humanitarian reasons, be it homelessness or other humanitarian causes, which I think is noble.

And it causes a conversation, even if the papers are writing on, oh, Michael Dee said something or Mary Robinson said something that's not really on script.

That then is getting people to think about the things that they said.