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Irish deputy leader snubs Savannah St Patrick’s Day celebrations over 'men only' dinner

“Count me out - I’m not doing it. I don’t believe in segregation ... on a gender basis”

By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Saturday, March 16, 2013, 7:46 AM
Updated Saturday, March 16, 2013, 10:15 AM

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Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore photographed outside Government buildings in Dublin
Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore
Photo by Google Images


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Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister has skipped a St Patrick’s Day trip to Savannah to avoid a Hibernian Order ‘male only’ dinner.

Labor Party leader Eamon Gilmore dropped Savannah from his list of destinations as a government ambassador on Ireland’s national holiday.

The country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs did visit nearby Atlanta.

High profile government ministers have attended the ‘men only’ dinner in Savannah according to a report in the Irish Times.

The paper says Gilmore dropped a visit to Savannah because he would have had to attend a men-only dinner.

Savannah annually hosts one of the biggest St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the southern United States.

Any visit to the city on Georgia would have required Gilmore to attend the anniversary dinner of the Hibernian Society of Savannah.

One of the city’s main St Patrick’s Day events, it is an exclusively male dinner according to the paper.

The report adds that Savannah was excluded from Gilmore’s itinerary before any formal invitation was issued for the Hibernian Society dinner or before any arrangements regarding his attendance were put in place.

Speaking in Atlanta on Friday, Gilmore told the paper that he understood that his attendance at the dinner was to be a major part of a trip to Savannah so he had decided not to visit the city.

He has opted instead to visit New Orleans on Saturday for St Patrick’s Day events before travelling on to Washington DC.

Gilmore insisted he would decline to attend any men-only event as part of any foreign travel programme.

He said: “Count me out - I’m not doing it. I don’t believe in segregation either on a gender basis or on any other basis.”

Savannah has one of the biggest Irish populations in the American southeast and holds the second largest St Patrick’s Day parade in the US with over 500,000 people attending the event every year.

Gilmore added: “It is not a case of me not wanting to go to Savannah but there is no point in bringing me to Savannah if one of the major parts of the programme is going to be a men-only event.”

In response, Hibernian Society’s president William Bruggeman said: “We are not aware of any politician, Irish or US, that has ever declined an invitation to attend our anniversary dinner held on St Patrick’s Day evening due to disagreement with any of our traditions.”

Previously, Fianna Fáil ministers John O’Donoghue and Noel Dempsey travelled to the city in 2009 and 2010.

​
See more: St Patrick's Day , Irish News , Irish government
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42 Comments

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jacersagain | Mar 20, 2013, 05:25 PM EDT
@IrelandNorth – Yr post deeply concerned me... have you checked with a Surveyor as to whether your building is structurally sound after the blasting sounds of the American Bands drums? Jeekus, no one wants to sue those fabulous bands for structural damage to any Dublin City home!

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jacersagain | Mar 20, 2013, 04:40 PM EDT
Well posted casuallMBA... excellent recognition of caring people in American Hibenian organisations that that eejit Counihan knows nothing about.

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jacersagain | Mar 20, 2013, 04:36 PM EDT
Ag AnPiobaire – tá tú ceart. But you must take note that almost every irresponsible article that Patrick Counihan writes is designed to generate response whatever the subject, whether it’s anti-Catholic, anti-Pope, anti-Irish, anti-Irish-sportspeople and on occasions sexist when he writes of paedophilia and the lingerie choices of of Caroline Wozniacki, the renowned tennis player and g/friend of Nth Ireland golfer Rory McIlroy. How ICentral keep him in employment despite his flagrantly disrespectful, most times untruthful, incorrectly-researched articles is a wonder of their judgement, never mind Counihan’s choice of subject or words for his articles. Shure I could write better than him... I’m not even a journalist, an’ I say thanks be ta jaysus for that!

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casualMBA | Mar 20, 2013, 12:40 PM EDT
Over the years, Hibernia, through its religious orders, has delivered caring journalism, ideas, and journals to western civilization. Both the Hibernian Society and the AOH have delivered, over the years, care to many in need, from the new born to the elderly. Irish politicians, as well as Irish Central, might do well to heed such caring behavior in their comments and headlines.

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AnPiobaire | Mar 19, 2013, 03:15 PM EDT
This article says that the event in question is held by the "Hibernian Order". There is no such organization. The event is held by the Hibernian Society of Savannah. By creating this name of a nonexistant organization the author seeks to imply that there is a connection between the group and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. There is no such connection. Whatever about the merits of this event, of the Society, or of the AOH, Irish Central does itself no favor by, once again, engaging in careless journalism.

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IrelandNorth | Mar 18, 2013, 04:30 PM EDT
jacers- you're right -again! Yup, the good ol' Yanks pumped some much needed psazz into an otherwise wet and dreary Dublin. The forceful blasts of their wind instruments bounced off my apartment bldgs close to the parade end at St Patrick's Cathedral. Maybe our Irish-American friends can clone Messrs Kenny and Gilmore whilse they're there in the USA, and send back less politically correct Xerox copies.

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casualMBA | Mar 18, 2013, 11:58 AM EDT
correction @jacersagain, compliments on your kind words, shared solicitude for Ireland's overly Eurocentric tendencies, gratitude for your run-down of the Dublin parade, for your courteous translation for the average non-Irish speaking American, and "so what?" to the ill advised snub of the Savannah parade, and, its gender thing "segregation," and yes, peace to one another's souls, Christian, secular, or otherwise. Slainte!

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casualMBA | Mar 18, 2013, 11:46 AM EDT
@jacersagain, compliments on your kind words, shared solicitude for Ireland's overly Eurocentric tendencies, gratitude for your run-down of the Dublin parade, for courteous inclusion of the average non-Irish speaking American, and "so what?" to the ill advised snub of the Savannah parade, and, yes, peace to one another's souls, Christian, secular, or otherwise. Slainte!

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jacersagain | Mar 18, 2013, 07:36 AM EDT
On the subject of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, happily held in Ireland without Gilmore’s participation, I must say Congratulations and mucho thankso to all the American Bands who made the Dublin St. Patrick’s Day Parade so spectacular yesterday. All of the US bands (and the one and only Canadian Burlington Teen Tour Band) were fantastic, immaculately turned out, playing great music and some baton holders and cheerleaders doing some spectacular dancing in the streets of Dublin – Bands from Sth Carolina, Colorado, NY, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana and especially Brewster from NYC but wasn’t the Cedar Rapids Band from Iowa something else on the day??? – They were a real stand-out band with the Colorado band a close second by the scrimpiest margin but the biggest thanks must go to the FDNY Pipe & Drum Band who paraded in NYC’s parade on Saturday and flew through the skies during the night to appear again in Dublin’s parade yesterday. Whaaat a great effort they made...! We Dubliners were ever so delighted and pleased to see them and thankful for their participation. Maith go leor do na fir agus na mná i an FDNY!! As mo chroí ó Blá Cliath agus go fíor Éireanach, Buíochas Libh go Léar! (All the best to the men & women of the FDNY. From my Dublin and very Irish heart, Thank You All so Much!!).

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jacersagain | Mar 18, 2013, 07:02 AM EDT
@ IrelandNorth... well said except that, as Dean Martin used to sing.. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder for somebody else"...

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jacersagain | Mar 18, 2013, 07:01 AM EDT
Be jaysus casualMBA, much as I always enjoy your most-times sensible posts, I didn’t know you had it in ya to write such great poetic stuff. St. Patrick (not Pearce) musta inspired ya on the day!

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IrelandNorth | Mar 18, 2013, 05:50 AM EDT
The Labour Court in Ireland some years ago determined that a right to join a union also conferred a right not to join one. Why should a Eurocentric egalitarian diktat impose a duty to be in mixed company all the time. Right out of the imposed multiculturalism dogma of the new Church of Political Correctness hierarchy that has replaced a deposed Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in Ireland. Absence makes the heart grown fonder.

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casualMBA | Mar 17, 2013, 08:32 PM EDT
For all the government secured bank robberies and money laundering, jacersagain, Ireland remains Ireland. As Patrick Pearse has said "...They have left us our Fenian dead..." Ireland's economics, despite its seedy, greedy, and tacky turns, is secondary, on this of all days, to Ireland's prayer at a wake, to its hearty chorus or clear tenor at a wedding, to its spontaneous poet in a pub, to its mother's crooning lullaby, its heart stirring ballad of love waiting or love's fierce love of Ireland. The American South is not hostile to Gilmore's itinerary. It sees it for what it is. A nationalistic Irish politician cavorting with, or challenging, American Southerners to "sound off," for the Irish people, for the common denominator of a religion unimpeded love of their Irish heritage.

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jacersagain | Mar 17, 2013, 06:25 PM EDT
I’ve enjoyed reading the comments below which truly show up Gilmore for the hard-necked, publicity-seeking idiot that he is. How he has been re-elected time and again as a TD (member of the Irish parliament) over the last 24 years amazes me, especially given his former association with the Official IRA in a political capacity (the organisation of bank robberies, money-laundering and other anti-Irish State criminal activities were amongst their political decisions-making), his association with the Marxist ideology of the Russian Communist Party and his membership of the Irish Workers Party which was communist-orientated - all of which he once boasted about in times gone by but which he now no longer does as he hides under a new cloak. The man has no sense of propriety or sincerity, is a turn-coat of the most brazen kind, a self-proclaimed atheist who should therefore most definitely not be participating in any celebrations anywhere in the world honouring St. Patrick, our Holy national saint of Ireland. For one with once-Communist Marxist political leanings, he is today a very wealthy man. Will everyone in America and elsewhere involved in future St. Patrick’s Day celebrations please brush him off your list of invitees and turn your backs on him as he has done on the Hibernian Society in Savannah?

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jacersagain | Mar 17, 2013, 06:20 PM EDT
Quite rightly said eiriamach! (I’ll expand on that in another post). As Éireann, deirimse leat agus le loadsa eile people (Pardonnez mon Francais svp *hic*) - Beannachtaí Lá Féile Naomh Pádraig leatsa freisin.

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