By Ray O’Hanlon
A grim-faced Bertie Ahern cast his eyes over still-smoking ground zero in Lower Manhattan last Friday. After his visit to the scene of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack, the taoiseach told reporters that he had no qualms over the U.S. bombing of the Taliban and al Q’da forces in Afghanistan.
Flanked at a press conference by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Ahern said that the U.S. is entitled to respond militarily to the attacks. “The U.S. is totally within their rights and we support them,” he said.
Only a short while before, the taoiseach had seen for himself the devastation wrought by the terror attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers.
Ahern arrived at the ground zero site in a police and secret service convoy on the third day of his visit to Boston, Washington D.C, and New York.
Ahern and his party were allowed a panoramic view of ground zero by virtue of a wooden viewing platform that has been assembled on the west side of the site to accommodate visiting dignitaries.
Follow us on social media
Keep up to date with the latest news with The Irish Echo
Ahern was briefed as he looked over the devastated area by the NYPD’s first deputy commissioner, Joe Dunne.
While he was present at the ground zero site, rescue workers recovered the remains of one of the dead. Ahern watched in silence as the remains were placed in an FDNY ambulance.
At about the same time, one of the giant excavators removing debris hit a hot spot. A sudden pall of black smoke rose from the debris field.
Ahern spoke with firefighters and police and also with two Irish construction workers, Mike Power from Waterford and Phil Farrelly from Manhattan, who have been working at ground zero since the day after the trade towers were destroyed.
Speaking to reporters after his visit to the site, Ahern said that what he had seen was sad and frightening.
“Only when you see it yourself do you realize how great the devastation is,” Ahern said.
At his press conference with Giuliani, Ahern referred to Ireland’s national day of mourning after the Sept. 11 attacks as an example of how the Irish people felt about the attacks.
The mayor said that it had been a “tremendous inspiration to see the spontaneous support of citizens in Ireland who seemed to be feeling exactly the same as we were.”
The taoiseach also gave details of a new fund, the Innisfree Fund, which aims to raise money to send the families of police and firefighters lost on Sept. 11 to Ireland for a vacation. The fund is being organized by the Washington, D.C.-based U.S.-Ireland Alliance.
Ahern’s U.S. visit included a meeting with President Bush at the White House, during which the leaders discussed the war against terrorism and the peace process in Northern Ireland.
While in Boston, Ahern addressed the Forum on Public Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In New York, he was honored by the Ireland-U.S. Council for Commerce and Industry.
In a speech to the Council, Ahern said that Ireland’s goal was clear even as world economic prospects were diminishing in the wake of Sept. 11.
“We want to stay ahead of the competition and to outperform it in these more challenging times, as we did in the better times of the last few years,” he said.