This article is from page 22 of the 2010-01-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 22 JPG
THE Government was left holding a very big baby after President Paddy Hillery’s state visit to Tanzania. The problem arose after Tanzanian Presi- dent, Julius Nyerere presented Presi- dent Hillery with a baby elephant during his visit.
The Tanzanian Government came looking for the transport charges to be paid for transporting the elephant to Aras an Uachtaran.
When the elephant arrived in Ire- land in September 1979, President Hillery contacted Dublin Zoo to find out would they be interested in pro- viding a new home for the elephant.
“I left a message to say that we would be very happy to receive the elephant,’ Dublin Zoo Director Ter- ry Murphy said in a letter to Presi- dent Hillery.
However, by this stage the Tanza- nian Government just wanted to be paid, with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Tanzanian writing to the Irish Embassy in Dar es Salaam with a reminder that the Irish Government had undertaken to pay all air freight charges.
“It is in accordance with this un- dertaking that the ministry has the honour to request the reimbursement of the sum of 66,063 shillings, being the cost of transporting by air the live elephant as referred to above.”
By December, Irish officials were becoming frustrated about the fail-
ure to pay the bill. “Do you have £4,000 to spare,’ wrote one official. ‘None of the three departments we have had to contact in an attempt to sort out this mess has either. The up- shot of the whole affair is that we are left holding this weighty baby and PVCCMCIAUCG GRY GINO Nao RRo) Tana
The bill for President Hillery’s baby elephant was finally paid before the end of the year.