Gilmore to honour memory of 9/11 firefighter

THE FIRST official act by Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore during his week-long stay in New York will take place this evening at the fire station in Maspeth, Queens.

Mr Gilmore will present a Certificate of Irish Heritage to Bridget Hunter on behalf of her son Joseph Gerard Hunter, a firefighter who was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

With the help of Irish cousins, Mrs Hunter maintains a permanent shrine, a Mass card tied with string to a small altar, to her dead son in Connemara.

The certificate notes that he is the descendant of two uncles from Co Galway.

As a four-year-old boy Hunter would race to the corner when he heard fire truck sirens. At 11, he set up a team of wannabe firemen. Hunter became a volunteer fireman at 18 and graduated from the fire academy in 1996. Nineteen members of his squad 288 in Maspeth perished on 9/11.

Hunter’s certificate is the first issued by the Irish Government. The documents will be available to members of the 70 million-strong Irish diaspora who can prove an ancestral connection with Ireland at the end of September. They will cost about €40 and will be available in Irish, English and Spanish.

The idea grew out of a report on deepening Irish-American relations drawn up by the Republic’s Ambassador to Washington, Michael Collins, in March 2009.

The report quotes the Irish Constitution, stating that the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage. “We should look at ways of encouraging and facilitating people, who are not entitled to citizenship, to give expression to their Irish ancestry,” Mr Collins wrote.

“One such measure could be a new certificate of Irish ancestry which, while having no legal standing as such, would constitute official recognition for many people of their familial and emotional connection with Ireland.”