'Friendship Day' trip to US was not part of St Patrick’s Day, says Cork council

A €6,645 mid-March ‘Irish Friendship Day’ visit to Oklahoma was not counted as part of Cork County Council’s St Patrick’s festival US delegation, because it was funded through its East Cork municipal district, the council has said.

Earlier this month, 14 representatives of Cork County Council — eight councillors and six officials — travelled to New York, Chicago, and Detroit for 12 days, attending various social, cultural, and business events over the St Patrick’s festival.

That 12-day trip cost €31,292.69, including €13,488.69 spent on flights and €17,804 on accommodation.

However, travelling separately to the St Patrick’s delegation was a five-day, three-person East Cork municipal district delegation to visit the Choctaw Nation and McAlester City in Oklahoma.

This group, consisting of Fine Gael councillor Rory Cocking, Fianna Fáil councillor Ann Marie Ahern, and county council official Eileen Coleman, was not included as part of the council’s official St Patrick’s festival delegation.

The separate trip to Oklahoma flew out on March 11 and returned on March 15, and cost €6645.39. Part of the Oklahoma visit included a trip to McAlester city, where the Cork delegation met with officials from McAlester City Council.

McAlester held its inaugural St Patrick’s festival this year, and McAlester mayor Justin Few showed the visitors around the city as part of its March 13 ‘Irish Friendship Day’.

Not related

A council spokesperson said: “The Oklahoma delegation was not related to Cork County Council’s delegations that visited Chicago, Detroit, and New York as part of the 2026 St Patrick’s Day engagements”.

Asked why this expenditure was not included under the council’s St Patrick’s festival delegation to the US, they replied that it had been organised and paid for by the East Cork municipal district.

Asked how the municipal districts are funded, the spokesperson said it was “through annual budget allocations from Cork County Council, which are distributed locally via structured grant schemes to fund community and development initiatives”.

Asked whether any other county council representatives had travelled abroad during the St Patrick’s festival, the council spokesperson replied: “No additional foreign travel was approved by corporate services beyond the delegations already referenced.”

The county council’s visit to Oklahoma celebrated an important connection between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation that is commemorated by a 20-foot, stainless-steel sculpture in Midleton, entitled Kindred Spirits.

In the depths of 1847 — Black ’47 — the worst year of the Famine, the Choctaws gathered in Scullyville, Oklahoma, and raised about $170, the equivalent in today’s money of about €5,000, and sent it to Ireland.

Forcibly removed

Less than two decades earlier, the Choctaws had become — under Irish-American US president Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act — the first Native Americans to be forcibly removed from their lands.

Through the worst winter on record and a cholera epidemic, some 17,000 Choctaws — men, women, and children — were forced to walk the 800km Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. As many as 6,000 died en route.

Mr Cocking said it had been an honour to be welcomed by Chief Gary Batton to the Choctaw Nation headquarters in Durant, Oklahoma, and then to Tuskahoma, to see the Eternal Heart monument, a sister sculpture to Midleton’s Kindred Spirits.

“I thought it was important that we further the ties between our two peoples and that we remember that incredible act of kindness from the Choctaw people,” he said.