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US President Joe Biden has congratulated the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation on the opening of its new centre in Co Roscommon.
President Biden turned the first sod for the project in September 2017 during a visit to Ireland, which he described as a "deeply moving experience".
Speaking in a video message to the hospice on Friday, Mr Biden congratulated the team on the opening.
US President Joe Biden sends his best wishes to @MayoRoscHospice on the opening of its new centre in Roscommon.
— Ben Finnegan (@_BenFinnegan) November 5, 2021
“I know this place will bring comfort to the proud people of Mayo and Roscommon”
Also says he’s eager to visit Ireland. pic.twitter.com/K9Lj5m6fG6
“I know this special place will bring comfort to the proud people of Co Mayo and Roscommon, and for me, it’ll always have a special place in my heart,” he said.
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Mr Biden has a cousin, Laurita, working for the hospice foundation, and said he also felt a connection because of his son Beau.
Just six weeks after he was elected a US senator in 1972, Mr Biden’s wife Neilia and three children were involved in a car accident, in which their car was hit by a tractor trailer.
His wife and their one year-old daughter, Naomi, died, and his two sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured.
Mr Biden said his mother and father were both cared for at a hospice, and his son Beau had a two-year battle with cancer before dying in May 2015.
“The fact that you have etched Beau’s name and memory into the tapestry of this hospice is something my family and I, and his children in particular, will never, ever forget,” he said in the video message.
Mr Biden, whose ancestors emigrated from Co Mayo in the early 1800s, is frequent visitor to the west of Ireland, and explored his family connections here in 2016.
“When my family travelled to Ireland, we felt so much love and joy, but it was also bittersweet, since it was a trip that I had hoped to share with our son Beau,” he said.
The Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation funds palliative care services to people with life-limiting illnesses and their families in Co Mayo and Co Roscommon.
Quoting WB Yeats’ poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Mr Biden said: “For all those who’ve come to this hospice in the future, I pray they and their families will find peace there, for peace comes dropping slowly, but it comes. It comes.”
Mr Biden added that he was “anxious to visit” and wished the hospice the best going forward.