The right hon. Lady has stolen a bit of my thunder. I totally agree, and for a specific reason: the complexity of our relationships. I go back to my other family, in County Mayo, in the province of Connacht. My great uncle James, who was part of the King’s Regiment of Scotland, fell the week before the armistice was signed, whereas his brother was in the Irish Republican Army—two very different sides of a very complex constitutional history. I very much agree with the right hon. Lady. Also, I think either a senior Minister or the Taoiseach himself has for many years now laid a wreath in Enniskillen, which shows how far we have progressed.
I come back to the personal connection—I am trying to keep to time, Cathaoirleach. When I did a DNA check a couple of years ago, I said to my dad, “What do you want for Christmas? How about a DNA check?” He said, “Aye, all right. Why not?” Well, I wish I hadn’t. My dad has cousins in Beijing and Alaska—it is just extraordinary. I think he is technically related to 35,000 people across the planet, going back to fourth cousins. This guy in Letterkenny came over for the commemoration of the Clydebank blitz, which is this week; the Irish diaspora in Clydebank, my home town, played a huge part in the war effort and in rebuilding shipping after the second war.
The then Mayor of Letterkenny, Jimmy Kavanagh, who is a councillor in County Donegal, came to this extraordinary orchestral movement, which was commissioned for the 80th anniversary. Jimmy and I were talking about the fact that we are the same height, and that each of us is kind of familiar looking—I have to say that he has more hair than me—and we laughed that we could be related. He said, “Where is your dad’s family from?” I said, “My grandad’s from Stralongford, between Letterkenny and Convoy.” He said, “My mother’s a Docherty; that is where she is from.” Needless to say, having done the DNA check, it turns out that Jimmy Kavanagh is my dad’s second cousin; Jimmy’s mum, who sadly passed away at 101, is my dad’s full cousin. Extraordinary.
We lost connection with our Donegal family for very specific reasons. So many of them left because of poverty, as has been alluded to in this debate. Maybe I can be a critical friend here, in a sense. We have talked about the great hunger, but we need to be very clear about history. It impacted the province of Ulster specifically, and also the whole west of Ireland. The famine was the impact of a political decision: that is the reality. We have come so far to rectify that, so that the whole island of Ireland has now reached a population that exceeds that of 1845, which is a remarkable turnaround for a country—an island—that saw 1 million people die and 1 million leave.
I have to say, though, that I am still glad they came to Clydebank, and to places such as Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven, to work in places like John Brown’s shipyard or Denny’s of Dumbarton, or with Turkey red dye in the Vale of Leven. Those workers’ participation in that industrial revolution should be commemorated. That is why I am wearing my tie, which shows the Royal Mail ship the Queen Mary. They participated in its construction, and that had a negative impact, not only on them, but on all the workers around them, through conditions caused by asbestos, such as mesothelioma. Many of the Irish diaspora who came to Scotland suffered the infamous asbestos-related conditions. Today, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of the first person to be diagnosed with asbestos-related conditions, Nellie Kershaw.
As I draw my thoughts to an end, I am mindful of the ordinary Irish people—not the well-known folk who have made names for themselves in the music industry, the arts or big business, but people such as Rita Dawson, a nun from the Religious Sisters of Charity, based on Clydebank in my constituency. She has been there for nearly 40 years and has led St Margaret of Scotland Hospice through thick and thin. She has been a leader of the palliative care community not just in Scotland, but across the whole of these islands. She is not only chief executive of that organisation, but has been a board member of St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney and St Andrew’s Hospice in Lanarkshire.
I want to make special mention of Rita’s faith and commitment as an Irish woman who feels at home in my community and works across it, no matter who somebody is, what god they worship or which person they marry. Her leadership has ensured that palliative care and end-of-life support has been second to none—not only in West Dunbartonshire, but across the whole of Scotland.
I am also mindful that in Scotland Irish clubs seem to have fallen back. Perhaps that is because we know we are Irish or Scottish, and it really does not make any difference, so we have not needed them—although we used to have them. I remember the Ramelton Club in Linnvale, my home town; it is why I decided, with others such as Danny McCafferty, to create the first Dunbartonshire Irish trust to cover my constituency and the old county of Dunbartonshire. That would enable us to reconnect with that diversity and complexity, and celebrate St Patrick as he was.
St Patrick was not a Protestant or a Catholic; he was an old Celtic Christian who was forceful, and whose history is as complex as anybody else’s. His foundation of Iona Abbey had an impact that stretched beyond these islands. The modern Christian Church exists today because Patrick of the Province of Ulster and his missionaries maintained the fabric of civilisation in what some people call the dark ages. If it was not for people such as him, we would probably not be sitting here today. I am delighted, as an ancestor of Niall of the Nine Hostages, with all the complexity of that history, to be able to participate in this debate and speak on behalf of my colleagues from the Scottish National party.
2.47 pm