This was the Obama administration's broadest outreach to date and the response was indeed appropriate. There were few empty chairs in the briefing and question and answer session that lasted for more than two hours in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. As much as the information disseminated by senior administration staffers, it was the many, varied and often probing questions asked by the invited guests that proved to be an especially interesting part of the exercise.
Irish Americans do indeed have many questions to ask. It is to be hoped that those questions asked last Friday, and the issues that gave rise to them, will now be channeled upwards to the offices of the National Security Council, Domestic Policy Council, the Secretary of State, and both the President and Vice-President.
