DUBLIN (AFP) — Special ceremonies will be held in Ireland and Canada this year to commemorate the country's Great Famine 160 years ago that left over a million dead, the government said on Thursday.
The decision follows a lengthy campaign for an officially-backed national day of commemoration to remember the victims.
The population of Ireland, which exceeded 8 million in 1841, was cut by some 1.5 million as a result of deaths from disease and starvation and a surge in emigration following successive failures of the potato crop -- then a key part of the staple diet for many Irish people -- in 1845-49.
"There is nothing else in the history of the Irish people that can be likened to the Great Famine, either for its immediate impact, or its legacy of emigration, cultural loss and decline of the Irish language," said Community Affairs and Gaeltacht (Irish language) Minister Eamon O Cuiv.
A grandson of former premier and president Eamon de Valera, O Cuiv said the commemoration would be held on May 25 in Skibbereen, County Cork in southwest Ireland in parallel with an international event in Canada on May 10.
Skibbereen was one of the worst affected areas where some mass graves held up to 10,000 famine victims.
Around 250,000 Irish people arrived in Canada between 1845 and 1855. Today, four million Canadians, 12.5 percent of the population, claim Irish heritage.
A hundred years ago, a 40 foot (12 metre) high Celtic cross was erected to commemorate 7,000 Irish men, women, and children who are buried on Grosse Ile, a quarantine station near Quebec
During the 150-year anniversary commemorations in 1997, then British prime minister Tony Blair said Britain, as the colonial ruler, had failed the Irish people during the potato disaster.
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