President Michael D Higgins is expected to lead next week’s National Famine Memorial Day which is being held in Co Donegal for the first time.
The president will lead a wreath-laying ceremony and other commemorative events at the memorial which is being held at the former Milford workhouse and graveyard on Sunday May 21. Next week’s commemoration, which will be broadcast live on RTE News Now (2pm), will be the third time the event has been held in Ulster.
The National Famine Memorial Day was first organised in 2008 to mark the great famine, known as An Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger). Between 1845 and 1850. An estimated one million people died in Ireland from starvation and disease when the potato crop failed due to blight. A further one million people are believed to have fled the country, leading to a decline in Ireland’s population of around a quarter.
Announcing Milford as the location of this year’s event, the Republic’s Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin said it would give the people of Donegal an opportunity to honour the suffering and loss.
Ms Martin also invited schools to hold a minute’s silence on Friday May 19 in memory of those who perished. She said a minute’s silence should also be held at all sporting and public events during the commemoration weekend.
“The choice of Donegal as host for the 2023 National Famine Commemoration is particularly welcome given the deferral of the hosting of the 2020 event in Donegal due to the pandemic," she said.
“It is appropriate that the event will take place on the old site of the Milford workhouse, given the adversity endured by the people of Donegal in the face of poverty, hunger and emigration throughout the Great Famine and the 19th century.”
