4 March 2024
By Mary Bermimgham
mary@TheCork.ie
The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Kieran McCarthy, is leading a delegation to New York and Cork’s sister city of San Francisco as part of Cork City’s longstanding engagements with US partners in advance of St. Patrick’s Day. This year marks the 40th, or ruby, anniversary of the Sister City agreement between Cork and San Francisco, signed by former Lord Mayor John Dennehy and the late Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1984.
The Lord Mayor, Elected Members, Chief Executive Ann Doherty, and council officials, will be joined in San Francisco by representatives from An Garda Síochána; Cork Chamber of Commerce; Cork Education and Training Board (CETB); Munster Technological University (MTU) ; University College Cork (UCC), and Visit Cork.
The programme which is supported by the Consulate General of Ireland, San Francisco, and the San Francisco-Cork Sister City Committee, includes engagement with Irish state agencies based in California, and meetings with the City Administrator in San Francisco City Hall on matters of mutual interest, including climate change and flood relief. The delegation will meet with the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women to discuss gender equity in local government, as well as meet with officials from the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives at the GLBT Historical Society Museum. Cork and San Francisco are both members of the Rainbow Cities Network, an alliance of cities which works to promote inclusivity, diversity, and equal rights for the LGBTIQ+ community.
To mark the 40th anniversary, a reception will be hosted at the Irish Consulate General, and the Lord Mayor will address the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and meet with Mayor London Breed at the annual Irish flag-raising ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. A suite of meetings has also been organised by the external representatives joining the Lord Mayor’s delegation, covering sectoral engagement in policing, business, tourism and education.
In New York, the Lord Mayor’s programme focuses on meeting with Cork’s New York diaspora, including at the Cork New York Association Dinner, where the Lord Mayor is guest of honour. The Lord Mayor will also visit Ellis Island, and pay his respects at the Annie Moore Statue which is the twin of the statue in Cobh, both by the sculptor Jeanne Rynhart.
Speaking about the visit, the Lord Mayor said:
I’m looking forward to a busy and comprehensive programme which will copper-fasten Cork City’s US partnerships. I’m also delighted that so many of our city’s key institutions have opted to join this visit and develop our sectoral partnerships in the States. We can achieve so much as a team.
My visit begins in New York at the statue of Annie Moore. Hailing from County Cork, in 1892 Annie became the first immigrant processed through Ellis Island. One of the highlights of the visit for me will be meeting with the Corkonians who in a sense have followed Annie out. In this regard, I want to pay particular tribute to the San Francisco-Cork Sister City Committee who have worked tirelessly, with good humour and in a spirit of great generosity to connect Cork and San Francisco over the past four decades.
I also want to acknowledge the work of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who as Mayor of San Francisco, spearheaded the development of the twinning relationship. In later years, Senator Feinstein recalled how it all started with a conversation with Jack Lynch. She asked the former Taoiseach what he thought of the idea, and he turned to her and said “Done!”.
So much has been done over the past forty years, and I look forward to marking a ruby year for Cork in San Francisco, and looking forward to how we can continue to bolster Cork’s profile in the US as a great place to live, work, study, visit and do business in.
