But Kenny remarked on the enduring link between Boston and Ireland.
“That’s why I’m here,’’ he said, sitting in his suite at the Back Bay Hotel, where the Irish tricolor flew outside.
Truth be told, it’s more about business than politics. Kenny’s main interest here, besides giving a lecture at the Kennedy School at Harvard University last night, is attracting investment. The presidential library today is the setting for a lunch hosted by Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government’s agency that helps build Irish businesses in world markets.
Yesterday, Kenny met at the Boston College Club with officials from one of those businesses, Netwatch, a security firm that just opened its US headquarters here. Kathleen O’Toole, the former police commissioner who left Boston to become the chief inspector of Ireland’s national police force, is on the Netwatch board.
Kenny recently announced a plan to add 200,000 jobs in Ireland by 2020, a plan he called “ambitious but realistic.’’ He hopes a chunk of those jobs will come from new US investment. Ireland currently has about 100,000 jobs from direct US investment.
Ireland’s economy, once Europe’s most robust, has been battered by a banking crisis that exploded a few years ago. The unemployment rate has more than doubled in recent years to 14 percent. That is one of the reasons why Senator Scott Brown’s stewardship of a bill that would provide 10,500 visas to skilled Irish workers annually is such a priority for Kenny’s government. Kenny’s deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, met with Brown in Washington last week.
After arriving in New York from Dublin, and before flying to Boston, Kenny was on the phone with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, explaining the importance of the bill to Ireland.
