President Higgins State visit to Greece

It is a pleasure to report once more on the past year in the life of the Irish Institute. Our programme of activities in Athens continued in 2018, and was punctuated by special events. Most important among these was certainly the state visit in Athens of H.E. Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, with his wife Sabina in February 2018. The President had not been to Greece since, as a Minister of Culture of Ireland, he had met here his Greek counterpart Melina Merkοuri. I had the opportunity to meet the President in recent years in Ireland, and on these occasions he had already shown his interest in the mission and work of the Institute. But it was an exceptional pleasure to meet him again ‘at home ground’, at a private audience in the Grande Bretagne hotel in Athens, which was courteously arranged for us by the Irish Ambassador in Greece, H.E. Orla O’Hanrahan. (Christina Haywood, IIHSA Director)