Well, thank you very much. It's a great honor. Great people and a lot of Irish friends right there, a lot of very, very good Irish friends. But thank you all for being here. Even though it's still a few days away, I want to be the first to wish each and every one of you a very happy Saint Patrick's Day. It's a big day.
And as a lifelong New Yorker, nobody knows the Irish better than me. I know too much about the Irish. So let me begin by saying, I really do, I love the Irish. I've had great, great friends over the years and I love the Irish special people and I've been to Ireland many times. I have a lot of property in Ireland, actually, and does very well so I like it. If it didn't do well, I wouldn't like it, but I'm always struck by the awesome beauty of the Emerald Isle and the strength and warmth and grit and grace of the Irish people.
Very few people can compare. Today, we're delighted to welcome Taoiseach Micheal Martin, a very special man, doing incredibly well and very popular, and his beautiful wife, Mary. And I want to thank you both for being here, the first official visit to the White House, so thank you very much for being here with us. Thank you.
Thank you. I also want to extend a special welcome to Ireland's ambassador to the United States, Geraldine Byrne. And where are you, Geraldine? There you are, Geraldine Byrne Nason, and you're going to be working with this gentleman right here. He's a very great golfer, one of the best golfers that you'll ever see.
He'll be playing golf all day long with -- he'll take clients out to play golf, but he's won many, many club championships. And Ed Walsh, congratulations. Great, great. Going to be great. We're grateful also to be joined by the members and many members of our cabinet, proud Irish Americans, Sean Duffy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Where's Robert F. and Sean?
Hi, Bobby. I knew that -- let's see, Duffy, we knew and Kennedy, we knew. Some of you, I wasn't sure. Pam Bondi, I don't know. Are you Irish? Are you Irish? I don't know. With that name, I haven't figured that out. She's doing a hell of a job, I'll tell you, the Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright.
You're doing a good job. Do you see the oil is going down? It's going down, $65 a barrel today. You're doing better than I even thought, because everything else is going to be coming down with it, all those expensive goods that you had to suffer with for four years. They're all coming down. Energy leads the way.
Thank you. Good job you're doing with our friend, right? HUD Secretary Scott Turner. You're not Irish, Scott. Where's Scott. Give me a break, Scott. I want to be politically correct and not mention it, but I'm going to say, how much Irish do you have in you, Sean? I don't know. He said he said zero. That's right.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins. Doug? Thank you, Doug. You're Irish. EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, he's one of the most important guys. He's going to get those approvals. A nuclear power plant will take less than two weeks to get approved, right, Lee? It used to take 15 years. We're going to do it in a couple of weeks.
US Trade Representatives, Jamieson Greer. Where are you, Jamieson? Jamieson Greer. Thank you, Jamieson. And I also, there's a very special man here that I've been watching for a long time, one of the greatest dancers ever in the world. Michael Flatley is around here someplace. There's nobody like this guy.
Great, Michael. I've watched him, Radio city. I've watched you a lot, Michael. His feet, the way they moved, I don't know how the hell you do it. Can you still dance like that, or has Father Time caught up? You know, Father Time has never lost. You know that, right? But you're doing great. You look fantastic.
Also with us are Representatives, John McGuire. John? Hi, John. Good. Bill Huizenga. Bill, thank you. Ronny Jackson, Doc Ronny, as I call him, even though he's a congressman, special guy. John Joyce. John? Thank you, John. David Joyce. David? Thank you. And Guy Reschenthaler. You know that Reschenthaler, that's actually the way you pronounce it, you know?
Nobody else gets it right. But it's a hell of a name. Despite that, he's very successful at what he does, which is politics. And he's a great guy. Thank you, Guy. We have come together to this beautiful White House this evening for the annual Shamrock Ceremony, a living symbol of the long and unique friendship between Americans and the Irish.
And we're always going to have that friendship. Just like we have a great friendship, we'll always have that very special friendship. This wonderful tradition dates back to 1952, when the first Irish ambassador to the United States sent President Truman a box of shamrocks as a gesture of goodwill. Do you hear that Walsh?
You're not the first. I don't know what you are. What number are you? Do you have any idea? It's been a long time, right? Let's see. I could figure it out pretty easily. The bond between our nations as the old America itself, and it is as old as our country. So many Irish volunteers risked their lives in the American Revolution.
And George Washington described Ireland as quote, the friend of my country and my country's most friendless day, meaning Ireland stuck with us when we were not doing so well when it was looking pretty bad. Irish heritage gave us the boldness of Andrew Jackson. I didn't know Andrew Jackson was Irish. The brilliance of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Ford and Walt Disney and the leadership of the late, great President Ronald Reagan.
It was men and women of Irish descent who built the hallowed halls of Notre Dame University. Notre Dame is great. What a great place. The legend of the Boston Red Sox and the golden arches of McDonald's, that's right. Today, one in every 10 Americans trace their roots back to the old country. We're discussing we have 5 million people living in Ireland, but we have 35 million people living here, right, of Irish descent.
That's a pretty interesting statistic. I was looking at all these great dancers over here. You are very beautiful. Are you all great dancers, is that right? Look at that -- young, great dancers. Wow, that's great. Did you perform for the group before? Because I heard somebody was doing really fantastic. They said these people are fantastic.
I didn't get to see you. Do you want to do it again? Okay. Well, we might have them do it again. I heard you did a fantastic job. Thank you. As we celebrate Irish American Heritage Month, we're grateful to be joined by hundreds of these proud patriots right here today. And I know from personal experience that many of the people that we have here they're just fierce.
They have fierce Irish flame, we call it, you never give up, you never ever give up. Oh, I even see Don. Hello, Don. You are definitely Irish, Don McGahn. You are definitely an Irishman; there's no question about that. But you never give up, we will never give up ever, right, for the young ones ever, because you never know what's going to happen, you know.
Just a little bit more effort and you get there. Look at what happened to me. A lot of people said this was not a possibility [Applause]. He said that was going to be a tough race and we won in a landslide. And let's keep it that way, right. And we're having a great time bringing our country back and bringing it back at a level that people had no idea was going to take place this rapidly, this quickly.
And a lot of our great people that are secretaries and the people working in the administration are here and they're doing a fantastic job. So, I want to thank all of you. Five blocks east of where we are today, that spirit once helped save the very heart of the city's Irish American community. You all know about it. During the War of 1812, British forces rampaged through the streets of Washington burning every building in their path, every single building was being burned down.
Almost everyone fled but not Father William Matthews of Saint Patrick's Church which was built to serve the Irish workers who came to build the Capitol and the White House. They were building the White House, and they formed a great bond, and they were doing a pretty important buildings, the White House and the Capitol.
I would say that's about as good as it gets. As the fire spread, the priest and the group of his parishioners said that we're just going to have to barricade ourselves in. We're going to have to do something because it's really bad. It's really dangerous in here. And inside the church, they climbed to the roof armed with only buckets of water.
That's the only thing they had. And the other thing they had was faith in God, they had a big faith in God, they said, God will never do this to us. Risking their lives, they defended the church and more than two centuries later, Saint Patrick still stands as a beautiful testament to their incredible resolve and bravery and the patron saint of the Emerald Isle.
And that's what it is, Saint Patrick. So, we have Saint Patrick's Day, and we remember their courage and we honor the bravery of countless Irish Americans who have kept our country safe, strong, prosperous and free. And I made a little talk with my friend right behind me before at the Capitol and they gave me one statistic that they don't have here.
I thought it was an amazing statistic; 50 percent of the people that won the Congressional Medal of Honor were Irish. Can you imagine? And I want to check on that because that sounds to me -- it's just that I want to -- Pam, would you please have that investigated, necause how is that possible? Seriously, how is that possible?
I was very surprised to see that, Mary. Would you agree that that's possible?
Of course, it's possible.
With the Irish. No, think of it. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest award you can get in this country, and 50 percent -- well, there you also have the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But I will say, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it's much easier to -- I mean [Laughter], you get it for achievement in something, but you don't have to take many, many bullets.
Although there has been one bullet that was [Laughter] -- there's been one bullet that was not too good. I'm the only one, the presidential, that got that. But think of that 50 percent of the people that received the Congressional Medal of Honor had Irish heritage and were involved in some form with the Irish, and that's pretty good.
That's a pretty big statement. In closing, I want to remember one more Irish American patriot our nation lost this week. In 1979, Anthony R. Dolan -- some of you know that name; a lot of the people that work in the White House know it very well -- became the youngest ever Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting on government corruption in Stamford, Connecticut.
In 1981, he became the chief speechwriter to President Reagan whom he served for eight years. That's a long time, that's the full time, eight years, coining the phrase, evil empire, that was his word, that's a very famous -- people aren't here. The evil empire was a very profound statement. Tony served as a White House adviser throughout my first term and most recently was a special assistant to the president on domestic policy and the Domestic Policy Council.
He passed away early Monday morning, and his family is devastated, to be honest, they're devastated. A couple of the family members are here, but they're devastated. He was a great person, a great brilliant writer. And so, he will be very greatly missed. And Tony is looking down on us right now and he was so proud of what he did and his heritage.
He was so proud of his heritage. So, I want to thank him and his family for the incredible job they did. Once again, let me wish everyone a very happy Saint Patrick's Day. And with that I would like to ask Taoiseach Martin to say a few words. He's a very, very special man in Ireland, as you probably know.
He's a very popular guy, which is not easy in Ireland. And it's an honor to have both Mary and Michael here with us because we really -- we've gotten to know each other very well and they're great people. Thank you very much, everybody.