A day before he was scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly, Micheál Martin, the prime minister or taoiseach of Ireland, addressed a different assembled crowd: the mostly senior-citizen bingo players at the New York Irish Center.
He and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his first visit to the Long Island City community center, rolled the bingo lever and called out the letter and numbers, until a “BINGO!” rang out from the audience.
The visit was one of a handful of meetings the mayor has held this week during UNGA, including with Norway’s prime minister and President Donald Trump on Monday.
Earlier in the day, George Heslin, the executive director of the community center, presented the pair with a framed text written in Ogham, the Medieval Irish alphabet. He also declared the visit something of a “homecoming” for Mamdani — because of a loose connection with the mayor’s mother. The Irish Center once selected “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri as a book as part of a federal reading program, and later screened the film version — directed by Mamdani’s Oscar-winning mom, Mira Nair.
“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, a city powered by immigrants and, as of 2026, a city led by an immigrant,” Heslin said.
After leaving the center, Martin and Mamdani walked a few blocks to the G train, where they rode it seven stops. It was their version of “splitting the G,” a drinking challenge to take one sip of a draft Guinness so the drink line lands in the middle of the G on the glass’s logo, the mayor said.
While riding into Brooklyn, they discussed the importance of Irish immigrants to the city’s labor history, particularly in the subways.
The construction of the subways from 1900 until 1904 was overseen by contractor John McDonald, an immigrant from Cork in Ireland, which is where Taoiseach Martin is also from.
The mayor and taoiseach also discussed the shared issues in Ireland and New York City, like affordability and housing. A National Youth Council of Ireland poll released this week found seven out of 10 young Irish people considered leaving the country because of those issues.
“The housing issue is our number one challenge and priority,” Martin said. “We’re making progress, we’re building houses at the fastest rate in Europe, but it’s not enough, because we gotta get to about 50,000 per annum. We’re at about 36,000 now, and we will get higher again this year. Everything we’re doing is focused on getting more housing built.”
He also shared that Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking inside bars and restaurants in 2004 after he visited New York City, which had enacted the ban a year before.
The taoiseach had earlier in the day defended Mayor Mamdani after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely said he supported the terrorist organization Hamas and incited riots against Jewish New Yorkers.
Netanyahu, who’s in a tough reelection fight in Israel, is set to address the General Assembly on Thursday, where he is expected to attack Mamdani.
Martin said Mamdani “has been a very effective mayor and he’s quite popular here in New York.”
Mamdani also weighed in on issues in Ireland, voicing his support for the reunification of the island’s six northern counties, which are part of Great Britain, with the Irish Republic to the south — emphasizing the issue is up to the Irish people. He also said he’d “hopefully one day” visit Ireland, after an invitation from Martin.
And Mamdani was asked about two upcoming soccer matches between Ireland and Israel that will be played at neutral sites and have faced sharp criticism and calls for a boycott. Ireland’s team manager said of the games that Ireland was “playing against genocide,” setting off Israel’s football federation.
Martin defended the manager, saying earlier Wednesday that “Israel can’t keep denying what the world knows, and what the world understands.”
When asked whether fans shouldn’t watch the game, Mamdani again said it wasn’t up to him.
“The Irish have stood up for dignity and a real belief in human rights and applying it to Palestinians when so many people draw a line and refuse to do so, so I’m truly in appreciation,” he said, but added he’ll leave the question of a boycott to the Irish people.
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