“A President for all of the Irish”

This chapter considers the performance of Irishness in the inaugural speech of the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins on 11 November 2011. It focuses on the challenges faced by few interpreters who, with minimal preparation, delivered an Irish Sign Language (ISL) version for an imagined Irish Deaf TV audience. From the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169 until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, Ireland was under British rule and it remained a Dominion within the Commonwealth until 1949. The language of the Irish Deaf community is Irish Sign Language, which is used by some 5,000-6,500 people on the island of Ireland and can be considered the third language of Ireland. Emigration is an historically recursive correlate of Irishness and a key theme underpinning the President's question of how Ireland could re-establish the Irish economy and Irish society in the aftermath of the financial crash.