SECRETARY KERRY'S STATEMENT ON NORTHERN IRELAND AGREEMENT

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Success of Northern Ireland Talks
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
December 23, 2014

The United States warmly welcomes that announcement today of an agreement among Northern Ireland's political parties, facilitated by the U.K. and Irish governments.

This is statesmanship, pure and simple, and leadership by all parties to break a political impasse and avoid a fiscal crisis by resolving complex budgetary and welfare issues. The agreement reforms institutional arrangements, which will improve governance in Northern Ireland, and advances Northern Ireland’s peace process by establishing new institutions to deal with the often divisive legacy of the past – including a Historical Investigations Unit, an Independent Commission for Information Retrieval, an Implementation and Reconciliation Group, and an Oral History Archive. The agreement on legacy issues is based largely on negotiations led last year by former Special Envoy for Northern Ireland Richard Haass.

I commend the parties for working together through some very contentious issues – and finding solutions that will promote a more peaceful and hopeful future for the people of Northern Ireland. The agreement will now go through party structures for endorsement.

The U.K. Government also played a critical role in the talks’ success by agreeing to provide financial support, including new funding to implement the arrangements for dealing with legacy issues and to promote shared and integrated education.

I applaud the parties and the two governments for securing this agreement and pledge America’s full political support for the new arrangements. I'm also particularly grateful to my Personal Representative, Senator Gary Hart, and his Deputy Greg Burton, whose deep engagement helped ensure the success of the talks. I know Senator Hart looks forward to continuing his efforts next year in support of a peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland, and I am very lucky to have Gary devoting his time to this effort.

U.S. REP. TO UN SAMANTHA POWER'S REMARKS AT GOAL USA ANNUAL BENEFIT BALL

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

U.S. Mission to the United Nations: Remarks at the GOAL USA Annual Benefit Ball

Samantha Power

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations 

New York, NY

October 18, 2014

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Barry, for that generous introduction. Let me also welcome Ambassador David Donoghue – my colleague and co-conspirator – the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations, who is here tonight.

I’m very honored to have been asked to join you for GOAL’s dinner. I’d like to begin, somewhat abruptly, by reading you an excerpt from a news story.

“And there I saw the dying, the living and the dead, lying indiscriminately upon the same floor, without anything between them and the earth, save a few miserable rags. To point to any particular house as a proof of this would be a waste of time as all were in the same state; and not a single house could boast of being free from death and fever, though several could be pointed out with the dead lying close to the living, without any effort being made to remove the bodies to a last resting place.”

Now, this could have been written today about a village or neighborhood in one of the countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak. But it was published in 1847 in the Illustrated London News. The author, a young journalist and artist from Cork, named James Mahoney, was describing the scene he witnessed upon arriving in the town of Bridgetown, in southern Ireland, during the famine.

I begin here because while GOAL is an international humanitarian organization, it is also an Irish organization. GOAL was started by an Irishman, a former sports journalist in fact; an Irish football fan who, like all Irish football fans, was doomed to a life of heartbreak and suffering.

But he decided to dedicate his life to alleviating even greater, truer, suffering around the world.

I begin with the snapshot of the famine because it is impossible to understand the proud tradition of Irish generosity or the passion for service that drives GOALies in the field, without understanding the history of the Irish people.

When people come through an experience as harrowing as the scene that Mahoney described in 1847, empathy is in the bloodstream - it’s in the genes. It was in the bloodstream of my greatest mentor and my best friend, my mother, who brought me to this country from Ireland when I was nine. And I trust and hope it will be in the bloodstream of my kids, Declan and Rian.

These days, people often tell me that my last name, Power, is an appropriate one for representing the United States. What they don’t know, but what probably many of the people in this room do know, is that the surname Power comes from the Irish, de Paor, which means “of the poor.”

With a name like this, and the responsibilities that go with it, how could I not join GOAL tonight, when so many here are gathering in support of an organization that does so much for the most vulnerable and the most poor around the world?

There are so many worthy humanitarian crises that GOAL works on, that the United Nations works on, that the United States government, the Irish government work on; any one of them I could choose to talk about tonight, but I want to focus on Ebola because despite growing international awareness of the outbreak’s severity and mounting commitments, it has to be said, during recent weeks, we are still far behind the terrifying curve of this deadly virus. And the longer we wait to scale up our response, the harder it is for us to bend the curve downward and to stop the exponential spread. That means the greater the risk that we all face, no matter where we live in the world.

GOAL’s experience responding to the outbreak on the ground underscores the extent of the challenges the entire international community faces – and most importantly the infected communities face in dealing with this epidemic. And the interventions by GOAL and partners show how local, targeted interventions can make a profound difference in slowing the spread of this deadly virus.

Let me just give you two examples from the town of Kenema, a district in eastern Sierra Leone. According to Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry, 429 cases of Ebola had been confirmed in Kenema by October 1st – the second highest number of any district in the country of Sierra Leone. More than 20 health care workers in the district had lost their lives treating waves of patients at Kenema’s hospital.

In Sierra Leone, the government tasked the police with taking the lead in maintaining quarantines of people suspected of having infections. However, as GOAL staff in Kenema observed, police had little idea how to quarantine properly. GOALie Gillian McKay wrote in mid-September from Kenema that, “In some cases, police officers can be found sitting on the terrace of a quarantined house, eating food that the family has cooked.” In other cases, she wrote, “Quarantined individuals may be permitted to fetch water or go to the market because as long as they do not run away, the quarantine is being observed in the eyes of the police.”

The consequences of this lack of knowledge were swift and devastating. Not only did the poorly imposed quarantines fail to keep the virus from spreading, but three police officers who were enforcing them were themselves infected and later died. Many more police in Kenema feared they would be next.

Overwhelmed, the local police chief asked GOAL to train his officers in how to safely and effectively implement the quarantine. GOAL developed a training module that balanced the need to prevent the Ebola’s spread with the need to treat possible victims with dignity, rather than as prisoners or pariahs. The training included health professionals as well as Ebola survivors, who could tell the police how it felt to be on the other side of a quarantine – a perspective too rarely taken into account.

The program trained over 2,400 police officers in a month. They in turn have trained other police officers. And since the training began, GOAL reports that no additional Kenema police officers have been infected, and that the quality of quarantines has dramatically improved.

A second example from Kenema of a challenge across the region is the danger of misinformation. Early in the outbreak, word spread through social media in Sierra Leone that washing with salt water could prevent and cure infections. Meanwhile, as more people died in Kenema’s government hospital, a rumor spread that the virus was a sham, and that victims’ bodies were being used for cannibalistic rituals. At the end of July, an angry mob of thousands of people marched on the hospital, threatening to remove patients and bodies and burn the building to the ground. This gives you some sense of the challenge that all who are trying to deal with this epidemic are facing. It is an uphill battle.

At the very least, rumors like these have hampered efforts to contain the virus; at worst, they left countless people more vulnerable to infection. Yet in a climate of growing fear and limited understanding, rumors are spreading as fast as the virus itself.

Interventions by humanitarian aid organizations show, though, how the swift dissemination of accurate, easy-to-understand information can help offset these rumors and undermine the harm that those rumors are causing. In Sierra Leone, for example, public service announcements on local radio stations are now helping to dispel the fiction around false cures. To raise awareness about the causes of infections and the risks of customary practices like hand-washing the bodies of deceased relatives, GOAL and others enlisted the help of community activists, who can build on existing trust and relationships to spread awareness from the grassroots up.

The lack of knowledge among police about how to carry out a safe, effective quarantine, and the spread of these rumors are just two of the many challenges that GOAL and others responding to the crisis have faced, in Kenema and well beyond. Sierra Leone still has only a quarter of the beds it needs for sick patients. Schools in the country have been closed since July. Burial teams continue to lack adequate protection and the protective gear that they need. The list goes on. Guinea and Liberia face many of the same problems, and new problems of their own.

Under President Obama’s leadership, the United States is stepping up to help to address these challenges. We have contributed more than $350 million in humanitarian assistance and deployed more than 600 U.S. government personnel from USAID, from the CDC, and from the Defense Department – it's the largest-ever U.S. response to a global health crisis. We’re committed to sending up to 3,900 U.S. forces to the region and the U.S. military is already overseeing the construction of up to 17 100-bed Ebola Treatment Units, and we’re establishing a training hub where we will train up to 500 health care workers each week on how to safely interact with patients who have contracted this virus.

Some governments in the United Nations are punching well above their weight. I'll give you a couple of examples: Cuba has sent 165 doctors to West Africa – to Sierra Leone, in fact; Timor-Leste has pledged $1 million to the effort, notwithstanding itself, not that long ago, having come out of its own conflict and having tremendous needs at home. Humanitarian organizations too are doing tremendous work. Medecins Sans Frontiers, International Medical Corps, the Red Cross, and GOAL – these are organizations that are on the front lines. These are individuals who comprise these organizations, who are putting themselves into the hot zone because they know that they can remain safe and they know that they can save countless lives; and that they will contribute to putting an end to one of the worst health crises the world has ever seen.

Yet much, much more is needed. According to the UN’s financial tracking service, only 25 counties have pledged $1 million or more to the effort. There are 193 in the United Nations – 25 just. The UN has only received a little more than a third of the funds that they currently need – and that’s just for right now. In Guinea and Sierra Leone, the number of infections is projected to double every three to four weeks; in Liberia, infections are projected to double every 2 weeks. This is bad.

The international community isn’t just losing the race to Ebola. We are getting lapped, at present.

And it’s not just governments and NGOs that have to do their part. It is the private sector and private institutions, philanthropies, and individual donors. Far too few are giving far too little, counting on others to step up. Those of us who have made announcements, like the United States government, have to keep looking to see what more, we too, can do. This is an all hands on deck operation – one in which everyone needs to do his or her part.

Interventions like the ones that I have described in Kenema show that, with the right information and resources, we can slow the spread of this deadly virus. According to data from Sierra Leone’s health ministry, the number of new infections in the Kenema district declined every week of September. This really, really matters.

It is easy to lose sight of what the downward curve really means. It means children, women, and men who – because they were never infected in the first place – have the rest of their lives ahead of them. It means that even in an environment of fear and distrust, people can learn how to keep themselves and their loved ones healthy.

This is an especially important lesson as we witness the spread of fear here in the United States. The fear is understandable. People don’t want hospitals to treat the infected if they believe that health workers at those hospitals will get sick and themselves help spread the virus.

But we know how to care for people with Ebola safely and with compassion. We can give patients a fighting chance of surviving. We just need to ensure that doctors, nurses, and other health professionals get the right training – the training that the doctors and the nurses at Emory and Nebraska had when they successfully adhered to CDC protocols and safely treated those who came from West Africa and nursed them back to health safely.

In closing, one of the most important facts about the famine is that up to a million lives could have been saved. Food was exported from Ireland as people starved. I don’t have to tell this audience that. As a relief inspector wrote in 1846, “A woman with a dead child in her arms was begging in the street yesterday and the Guard of the Mail told me he saw a man with three dead children lying by the roadside. Notwithstanding all this distress, there was a market, plentifully supplied with meat, bread, and fish, – in short, everything.”

Today too, our world has everything that we need to curb the spread of the deadly virus of Ebola. And while it may not be around the corner in a market, we can get the necessary supplies to the infected communities. We can build the Ebola treatment units. We can supply the beds. We can train nurses and manufacture protective gear so that providing help – nursing people back to health – is not itself a perilous endeavor. We just need to act. We need to act more robustly and we need to act far more swiftly. We have the knowledge, we have the resources, and we have the capacity. It is on all of us to marshal the will and conquer the fear to enable us to use them.

Now, as then, hundreds of thousands of people’s lives are at stake. We cannot fail them. We must not fail them.

Thank you so much and thank you GOAL for having me with you this evening. Thank you.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY STATEMENT BY SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
On the Occasion of St. Patrick's Day in Ireland
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 13, 2014

The American people join Irish people all over the world in celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.

Today, we look back with pride on Irish contributions to America’s history and cultural heritage. But we also look forward as Irish immigrants continue to renew America and remind us of our common roots. President Obama said it best: “There’s always been a little green behind the red, white, and blue.” I couldn’t agree more. As a former Senator from Massachusetts, home to one of the largest Irish-American populations in our country, I hold a special appreciation of what Ireland means to America.

There are many Irish immigrants who have helped write America’s story with their incredible success. Today, we honor them and the next generation of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who are supporting this vital relationship.

Our partnership is broader and deeper than ever before. We’re working together to promote civil society, science and technology, education, and entrepreneurship. We’re also forging new academic and professional partnerships and pursuing opportunities through delegations, such as the one led by Special Representative Drew O’Brien to Limerick and Belfast in January.

Our investments in peace and prosperity will continue to strengthen the bonds between Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the United States, and promote economic growth in both our countries.

We often remark that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. In the words of Ireland’s great poets, to the island’s outsized place in world history, to the powerful example it sets for the world, there is a heritage for us all to celebrate.

On this joyous holiday, we offer the people of Ireland our warmest wishes and look forward to strengthening the Irish–American relationship for years to come.

EXPORT-IMPORT BANK GUARANTEES $187 MILLION BOND ISSUANCE TO SUPPORT HELICOPTER SALES

FROM: U.S. EXPORT-IMPORT BANK

Ex-Im Bank Provides $187.4 Million Guarantee for Bond Issuance Supporting Sikorsky Helicopters to Milestone Aviation Group

First Use of Capital-Markets Funding for Ex-Im-Backed Helicopter Exports

Washington, D.C. – The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is providing a $187.4 million guarantee of a capital-markets bond to finance the export of Sikorsky S-92® helicopters to The Milestone Aviation Group Ltd. of Dublin, Ireland.

The transaction is Ex-Im Bank’s largest financing of US.-manufactured commercial helicopter exports and the agency’s first support of these exports to a helicopter-leasing company.

It is also the first Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed bond issuance in the capital markets to fund helicopter exports. Deutsche Bank Securities was the sole structuring agent and the lead book runner for the bond issuance on May 22. The bond was priced at par to yield 1.87 percent.

The export sale supports approximately 1,500 jobs in the U.S. helicopter industry, according to Ex-Im Bank estimates derived from Departments of Commerce and Labor data and methodology. The S-92® helicopters are being manufactured at Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. facilities in Stratford, Conn., and Coatesville, Pa. Principal subcontractors also involved in the manufacture are Hamilton Sundstrand, Rockwell Collins and General Electric.

"Ex-Im Bank’s capital-markets financing has proven to be a successful way to fund exports of U.S.-made large commercial aircraft. Extending this type of funding to helicopter exports will help support more American jobs and more companies in the very competitive U.S. aerospace industry," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg.

The exports were initially financed by a commercial bridge facility that will be replaced by the funds raised by the issuance of the capital-markets bond. The helicopters are being delivered under a number of separate contracts, both directly with the Milestone Aviation Group and as part of sale-leaseback agreements. The end users are five different Milestone customers, and the S-92® helicopters will be operated in the United Kingdom, Norway and Brazil. Deliveries began in November 2012 and end in May 2013.

"The Sikorsky S-92® is a modern design, heavy-lift rotorcraft that brings economic efficiencies to our operators, and it is a very important part of the oil-and-gas and search-and-rescue market segments. Ex-Im Bank’s capital-markets financing facilitates the business transaction of this large capital investment. This financing vehicle makes the S-92® helicopter an even better fit for our customers," said Bob Kokorda, vice president of Worldwide Sales for Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. is a global leader in the design, manufacture and service of commercial and military rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. The company has a U.S.-based workforce of approximately 13,000 employees, including 6,630 in Stratford, Conn., and 875 in Coatesville, Pa.

"We are proud to have been selected by Ex-Im Bank as the partner for their largest helicopter financing and the first capital-markets transaction to support the export of U.S.-manufactured helicopters," said Milestone Aviation Group Chairman Richard Santulli. "The support of Ex-Im Bank, and the dedication and professionalism of its Transportation team, has been instrumental in helping us place Sikorsky aircraft internationally and given us the confidence to order more units of the world-class S-92®."

Milestone Aviation Group is the first global aircraft leasing company to focus exclusively on helicopters. Milestone partners with helicopter operators globally and supports them through 100 percent operating-lease financing. The company provides financing for helicopters, serving primarily the offshore oil-and-gas industry as well as search-and-rescue, emergency medical services, police surveillance, mining and other utility missions. Since launching in August 2010, Milestone has acquired more than 90 aircraft valued at more than $1.3 billion and closed leases with 21 operators in 20 countries.

SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY MAKES REMARKS WITH IRISH FOREIGN MINISTER EAMON GILMORE

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, U.S.
Remarks With Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
March 18, 2013


SECRETARY KERRY: Good afternoon, everybody. What a pleasure for me to welcome the Tánaiste here, our good Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore. Thank you very, very much. He was kind enough to come all the way to Shannon Airport the other day to meet me when I was coming back from the Middle East. And we had a wonderful – I can’t even remember, it was early morning or late afternoon, it was such a mix. But we had a great visit.

It’s my pleasure now to welcome him here. He’s come in to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and we’re very happy to wish all the people of Ireland a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. You know what Ireland means to America, and particularly to those of us from Boston. So it’s great to welcome you here. We are so appreciative for the partnership for the EU presidency and the agenda of Ireland right now as the EU president. And in addition to that, the trade initiatives, the economic initiatives, their leadership on human rights and other issues, and the process that continues to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

We’re very, very appreciative, so welcome.

FOREIGN MINISTER GILMORE: Thank you very much, indeed, Secretary Kerry. And it’s a great pleasure to meet you again, and in particular, to meet you on – we no longer say St. Patrick’s Day. It’s kind of more St. Patrick’s week now, but – (laughter) – we’re here for St. Patrick’s week.

And I want to, first of all, emphasize again the very close cooperation that exists between Ireland and the United States. We’re hugely appreciative of the support that the United States and successive administrations have given to the efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland and to maintain the peace in Ireland. We have a particular relationship now because Ireland holds the presidency of the European Union at this critical time when we are beginning the process of developing a trade and investment partnership between the United States and the European Union, which I believe will be to the mutual benefit of both the U.S. and Europe, and particularly Ireland because of the large amount of direct investment that we got from the United States.

And of course, we work in cooperation in a number of areas internationally. We – our aid programs, for example, we work together in Africa, the Thousand Days Initiative, the Scaling Up Nutrition addressing world hunger. And we are now both members of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, where we give high priority to a range of human rights issues.

So it’s a great pleasure to meet you here again. I’m glad to meet you on home turf. And again, I remember very fondly the discussions that we had in Shannon. I can’t promise that I’ll meet you every time that you pass through Shannon. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY KERRY: Promise me my Guinness? (Laughter.) I had a wonderful half-pint.

FOREIGN MINISTER GILMORE: Very moderate.

SECRETARY KERRY: Very moderate.

FOREIGN MINISTER GILMORE: Thank you.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you. Great to see you. Thank you. Thank you all very much.

SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY CONGRATULATES IRELAND ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY

 

FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
On the Occasion of St. Patrick's Day in Ireland
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 15, 2013
　

On behalf of the American people, I congratulate the Irish people as you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Every day, we celebrate Ireland’s many contributions to America’s cultural heritage and the strong ties of friendship and kinship between our two countries. As someone who represented the state of Massachusetts for decades, I hold a special appreciation for the contributions that Irish-Americans have made to both countries.

This past year, the United States and Ireland worked together to expand scientific research cooperation, promote global health, protect the environment, and foster innovation, investment, and jobs. Ireland’s important role as a global advocate for peace and understanding is exemplified by its successful tenure as chair of the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, its ongoing presidency of the Council of the European Union, and the upcoming leadership role on the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.

We look forward to deepening our partnership with Ireland in the year ahead. In this year of the Gathering in Ireland, as you mark this St. Patrick’s Day with family and friends, know that millions of Americans celebrate with you.

U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON CONDEMS BLACK'S DEATH

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Murder of Northern Ireland Prison Service Officer

Press Statement

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
November 2, 2012I strongly condemn yesterday’s senseless murder of David Black, an officer in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, and applaud the swift efforts of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to bring the perpetrators to justice. There is no justification for this outrageous and cowardly act. I offer my sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Officer Black, who had a long and distinguished record of service. The United States remains resolute in support of the people of Northern Ireland, who have condemned violence and embraced the path to peace and reconciliation.