Irish Ambassador visits Kraków Mayor

A literary residency for Irish writers was one of the topics discussed during a meeting between mayor Aleksander Miszalski and H.E. Patrick Haughey Ambassador of Ireland to Poland on October 11, 2024.

Launched in July 2022, the Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz residency program for writers has received a lot of attention and recognition, as evidenced by the Bernard O'Connor Award (established in 2018 by the Irish Embassy in Poland) awarded in 2023 to its organiser - Krakow Festival Office.

But literature is not the only topic of mutual relations. Economic cooperation is an equally important area. In 2022, trade between the two countries increased by as much as 40%, and in 2023 it amounted to €3 billion. A trade mission to Poland organized by Enterprise Ireland in May 2024, with the participation of the Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation Dara Calleary and representatives of 37 Irish companies, will certainly contribute to maintaining or even increasing this trend. The Kraków office of the well-known Irish architecture firm RKD, inaugurated in September 2023 by Ambassador Haughey, among others, is probably also an important partner in creating these realtionships.

If one were to ask what we associate Ireland with, one answer would be St. Patrick's Day. Maybe it is because until 2021, on the day of this national holiday, March 17, important monuments and architectural and engineering structures were illuminated in green all over the world as part of the “Global Greening” campaign. On this day, also in Kraków, the Father Bernatek Footbridge and the Lipska-Wielicka flyover were lit green. In 2023, the green illuminations were replaced by a tree-planting campaign as part of environmental activities: 432 trees were planted in the forests of northern Poland - the number referred to the year 423 when St. Patrick arrived in Ireland.

The popularity of the Emerald Isle in Poland is evidenced by the number of Polish citizens living in Ireland. 120,000 Poles make up 2.5% of the total population, the largest national minority in Ireland.