Many people don’t know this, but the Irish don’t refer to their Prime Minister as “the Prime Minister.” Instead, Ireland’s Prime Minister is called the “Taoiseach” which means “chief” in Ireland’s native language and by being in the right place at the right time, I got to meet the Taoiseach last weekend.
The Arcadia program managers arranged for us to participate in a homestay weekend in Castlebar, County Mayo, about an hour and a half away from Galway City. Heather, another girl in the Arcadia program, and I were assigned to the Reilly family, consisting of a woman named Marie and her husband, John. Also living with them was Jannick, a German high school student spending the semester in Ireland. Our first night was a little awkward. Jannick was much younger than us and Marie and John were much older than us, so it was difficult to keep up conversation. After we had dinner on Friday night, we watched the Late Late show, a popular Irish talk show that plays every Friday. To give us background on some of that episode’s content, Marie explained to us that the current Taoiseach is pushing to have the Seanad, one of the two houses of the Irish parliament abolished. I brought up that I had seen Enda Kenny, the current Taoiseach, at GW when he visited this past March. To this, Marie responded “Enda? He’s from Castlebar! His son goes to school with Jannick! They ride the same bus!” This completely blew me away and I found it impossible to keep my inner-fangirl in check. Marie was delighted that her American guest was so excited about meeting someone who knows the Taoiseach, especially since Enda Kenny is the first person from any part of west Ireland to hold the title. She said that the next day she would take us into town and show us his constituency office. She also told us that she would call her dad to see if he knew whether or not the Taoiseach would be in town that weekend even though she was pretty sure he would be in Dublin.
As we ate breakfast the next morning, Marie called her father, who actually knows Enda Kenny pretty well, to see if he could tell her whether or not the Taoiseach would be in his office that day. To find out, Marie’s father called Enda Kenny, who agreed to meet with us in town around noon. Knowing I would be really excited about this, Marie came running into the kitchen as Heather and I were eating breakfast and said “Girls, you’re never going to believe this! Enda is going to meet us in town for a coffee!” I was so excited that I actually threw my hands up and squealed in front of this woman that I had met less than 24 hours before. I could not believe that I was actually going to meet Ireland’s Prime Minister and one-time President of the Council of the EU.
Marie drove Heather and I into town to the café where we had been told to meet him. We got there a few minutes early so we sat in the car to wait for the Taoiseach to arrive. As we waited, Heather and I got to know Marie a lot better. She told us about what she usually does on Saturday and also about her family and living in Castlebar. Even though Marie said she expected Enda Kenny to arrive in his wife’s car, he was actually walking up the street when we saw him. Marie got out of the car and walked to to greet him as Heather and I walked timidly behind her. Upon seeing her, Enda Kenny said “Marie! So good to see you!” and gave her a big hug. He then looked at us and said, “Are these your American guests?” Marie introduced us and we each got our own hugs from him. “I’ve known Marie since she was this tall,” he said, “You could not have a better host.” We expressed our agreement with this statement and then he said, “One thing that you should know about Ireland is this: everyone in this country knows each other.” Instead of going into the café and having a coffee as planned, we walked to the park across the street where Enda Kenny pointed out various buildings in the town square and explained to us the history behind them. After that, we sat down on a bunch and the Taoiseach called one of is security men over to take a picture. He asked if any of us had a camera. I offered up my iPhone, in its bright green vintage-inspired cassette tape phone case. As his security guard held the phone up to take the picture, Enda Kenny said, “Is that a cassette tape?” When I bought my iPhone case, I would never have guessed in a million years that Enda Kenny would be making fun of it. After taking pictures, the Taoiseach asked us what we were studying in school. When Heather told him that she was studying English literature, he said “You know, when we were visited by the Queen a while back, I said to her ‘Since gaining independence, look at all of the Nobel Laureates we’ve had. Beckett, Shaw, Yeats; the Irish have taken the English language and made it better.’”
After that, our time with Enda Kenny had come to an end. He, of course, gave us all another hug and told Marie he would see her again soon. As he walked back to the car that had brought him there, a motorist driving by stopped their car to shake his hand. I found this so reflexive of Ireland’s culture of openness and accessibility. The Taoiseach, who is responsible for leading the entire country and handling foreign affairs, took time out of his day to meet with people he had never met. Up until then, I had thought that what people had told me about Irish hospitality had been somewhat overestimated. Sure I found that people were generally nice, but there didn’t seem to be much beyond common courtesy. After my experience with the Taoiseach, I realized just how warm Irish people genuinely are and how doing nice things for people is an established part of the culture. It also exemplified just how strong community ties are in Ireland. Being an important public figure doesn’t make you exempt from doing favors for friends and neighbors, it’s expected of everyone. And yet, everyone seems happy to do it.