By: Denise Foley

Noel Fahey, Irish ambassador to the U.S., presents the Taoiseach Award to Father John McNamee, pastor of St. Malachy's parish in North Philadelphia.

It was a study in contrasts: An Irish-American parish priest from North Philadelphia who has spent the last nearly 25 years working with the poor and a multibillion dollar international corporation that first brought electricity to Ireland in the 1920s were honored on November 21 by the Irish-American Business Chamber and Network in Philadelphia.

Father John McNamee of St. Malachy’s Parish received the Chamber’s first Taoiseach Award, which honors someone of Irish descent who has “shown exemplary compassion and leadership.” The Chamber named the award for the old Irish word meaning “chieftain.” Father McNamee, a published poet and essayist and the subject of a 2001 independent film, accepted the award from Noel Fahey, the Irish Ambassdor to the United States, who gave it, he said, “on behalf of the Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern,” Ireland’s prime minister who traditionally holds the official title “An Taoiseach.”

Jack Bergen, senior vice president of Siemens USA, accepted the sixth annual Ambassador’s Award from Fahey for his company, which was founded in Germany 160 years ago (locally, Siemens Medical Solutions has headquarters in Malvern). Siemens USA is one of the largest employers in Pennsylvania (15,000 people). It is a world leader in automation and control, lighting, medical, power, transportation, water, and communication technologies. You may read by Siemens’ lighting, get your mail because of their processing systems, hear with one of the company’s hearing aids, ride on one of its light rail trains, or, when you’re in Ireland, flick on an electrical switch to access the energy their hydroelectric systems have been providing since the earliest days of the Irish Free State.

The Irish American Business Chamber and Network was founded to promote business between Ireland and the Delaware Valley, says President Bill McLaughlin of McLaughlin and Morgan, a local firm that works with Irish and American companies looking to expand overseas.

“It’s something that makes a lot of sense for Philadelphia because of our similarities to Ireland,” says McLaughlin. “Philadelphia is at the center of the biopharma industry in the U.S. You draw a 40-mile radius around Philadelphia, Princeton, and Newark, and 80 percent of the big biopharma companies are represented. Seventeen of the top biopharma companies also have operations in Ireland.”

And the connection makes sense more now than ever. “The government of Ireland is one of the most pro-business friendly environments in Western Europe,” says McLaughlin. “They go out of their way to make business happen. They’re coming from an economy in the early '80s where there were 22 percent unemployed. Now there’s no unemployment. That’s a big change.”

Ireland’s highly educated workforce, like that in the U.S., is another match, McLaughlin says. “Education has absolutely been the main reason Ireland is out of its funk. The tax structure that favors businesses certainly contributes to that, but if you didn’t have the educated workforce, it wouldn’t be enough.”

In fact, he said, it was the efforts of Father McNamee to keep his parish school alive and thriving—unusual for a school in a largely non-Catholic urban area—that made him the leading candidate for the first annual Taoiseach Award. “Education makes the difference,” says McLauglin. “And Father Mac is prominent in that group. Only 15 of the 215 students at St. Malachy’s are Catholic. It’s really a tribute to his resolve to support the community.”