The Irish community in Beirut, and their friends, led by the honorary consul for Ireland, Khaled Daouk, celebrated the national feast day last saturday night in the newly-built Marriott Hotel. Much of the organising was the work of David Mulville, formerly with the stock exchange in Dublin and now with Solidaire, a vast building company redeveloping a city practically flattened during the 25-year civil war. Solidaire is seeking international investment to turn Beirut in to the glamorous capital of the Middle East it once was.
John Sutcliffe, head of Aer Rianta's Middle East operations, had come from his base in Bahrain for the St Patrick's Day party and was travelling on to another such event in Cairo.
Beirut airport is being rebuilt, and Aer Rianta, with its local partner Phoenicia Afro-Asia, has a 15-year contract to run the duty-free shop, which should be operational next year. Duty-free may be on the way out in Europe but Aer Rianta is forging ahead world wide. Most of the several hundred employees will be local, but the managers will be brought in from Ireland to get the operation running.
However, it wasn't just business people on saturday night. Everyone Irish in the city was there. They included those such as Brid McDermott from Kilkenny, who is married to local engineer, Andre Gemayel, a UCC graduate, who survived some of the worst incidents of the civil war and was forced to leave the city at one stage.
There also, of course, were soldiers who had come up specially from the UNIFIL HQ. The 82nd Battalion provided the pipers, and a singing group - Groundhog Express - formed in Camp Shamrock a couple of months ago with a great singer, Signalwoman Sonja O'Sullivan from Mayfield in Cork. The dancing music came from the Soul Masters, flown to Lebanon from Cork to entertain the troops.