Speech by the Taoiseach, Mr. Enda Kenny, T.D., at the naming and commissioning ceremonies of

It is pleasure and a privilege to be here to name our new naval vessel, James Joyce.

In May last year, when we named the LÉ Samuel Beckett, I wondered how – if – on their many perambulations along the Seine, either he or James Joyce ever considered they would be honoured in this way by their own country, and perhaps more crucially, in it.

James Joyce wrote that when he died, ‘Dublin would be written in his heart’.

True to his generous nature and spirit, that same heart has written this city into the hearts and minds and imaginations of millions of readers all over the world.

James Joyce is a name synonymous with Dublin: Dubliners and of course, Ulysses.

While we are aware of Samuel Beckett’s role in the French Resistance, we are perhaps less aware of the work done by James Joyce to help Jews in the Second World War.

According to his biographer Gordon Bowker, James Joyce helped a number of Jews, perhaps 15 or 16, escape to safety.

Therefore, I believe there is something in it that we are naming and commissioning the LÉ James Joyce at this time, when there is such a humanitarian effort in the Mediterranean to which the LÉ Eithne and Niamh have been responding so magnificently.

As a nation we are immensely proud of the work they are doing: another kind of Odyssey, not too far from Polyphemus and his rocks, or the Pillars of Hercules.

James Joyce wrote in one of his ‘Epiphanies’ –

“Who has pity for you when you are sad among the strangers?”

The crews of the LÉ Eithne and LÉ Niamh answer that question.

I believe they will be thanked, remembered and blessed by these families, and the people making these desperate journeys alone, for as long as they live.

Today I pay tribute to them and the magnificent way they are serving not only our country, but humanity itself.

Today too I want to thank the many people who gave their time, talent and their dedication to the project, from the initial concept, design, build and trial to the formal handover.

In particular, I would like to commend the members of the Civil/Naval Service project team and their counterparts in Babcock Marine Appledore who have been engaged on this overall programme for the last 5 years or so.

With the delivery of LÉ James Joyce, the people of Appledore in Devon can proudly say that their local shipyard has produced half the naval fleet for their neighbours across the water.

Their work is not yet complete as we are looking forward to the third ship under this programme: LÉ William Butler Yeats.

I want to wish Lieutenant Commander Brian Dempsey and his crew every luck and success on LÉ James Joyce. I know that they are all looking forward to working the ship to its full potential.

In conclusion, I want to thank again everyone who made this event such a success.

There were of course people in James Joyce’s life who made his work possible.

Not least was his patron Harriet Weaver, whose birthday is today, September first.

For James Joyce family was vital. It made him who and what he was, particularly the love of music he inherited and which sweeps through his work.

Therefore, I am delighted that a member of the Joyce family is with us today: his grand-niece Ms Carol Joyce.

To conclude I ask the question her grand-uncle asks of the reader:

“What’s in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name we are told is ours”.

Today I am honoured to invite his grand-niece to give to a naval vessel of his country the name her grand-uncle was told was his:

James Joyce.