President Kennedy looks back at Ireland’s history and the progress it has made.

In his address to the Dáil, President Kennedy looks back at Irish history and speculates on what might have happened if Ireland had been independent when his great-grandfather left New Ross, Co. Wexford. He is proud to be the first American president to visit Ireland and talks about the enduring links between Ireland and the United States. He describes how Benjamin Franklin was received by the Irish parliament in 1772 and the support Ireland gave to the cause of American independence. He returns to a recurring theme of his visit, the history of Irish emigration to the United States.

President Kennedy then takes a look at the Ireland of 1963 and the progress it has made, how its nationhood is not an end but a beginning and how it has undergone an economic and industrial revolution. But he says that “prosperity is not enough. Free Ireland will not be satisfied with anything less than liberty”.