![\"British](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/e8a8dd9c-b258-4730-8eda-ec29c613a641.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMs Owen met her husband, William Tierney, from Galway, when he was a serving member of the Irish Defence Forces\n<\/p>\n
Kara Owen took on the role in September following the departure of Paul Johnston and impressed when she showed off her skills as Gaeilge while presenting her Letter of Credence to President Michael D Higgins at \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in last week.<\/p>\n
While speaking at the \u00c1ras, she also reflected on attending this year\u2019s All-Ireland camogie final and offered a \u201ccomhghairdeas\u201d to the victorious Galway team.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Oliver Callan on RT\u00c9 Radio 1, Ms Owen said Irish people \u201chave been so kind and encouraging\u201d as she has undertaken learning the Irish language.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you really take a risk when you launch yourself into speaking in a language that\u2019s new to you, but people couldn\u2019t have been more encouraging. It\u2019s been wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though she admitted Irish has been the most difficult language she has learned \u2013 ahead of Cantonese, Vietnamese and French \u2013 Ms Owen said the experience has been \u201cso worth it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been so rewarding. I think I\u2019ll be learning it for a very long time to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked what level of Irish she was hoping to attain during her time in Ireland, Ms Owen said she wants to be able \u201cto communicate easily\u201d through the language.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really challenging, but I\u2019m 54 now, one of the things I love about getting older is you just worry less.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just worry a whole heap less. I know I\u2019ll be making mistakes all over the place. I\u2019ve found that will offend some people, maybe, if they want it to be perfect.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, there\u2019s nothing I can do. My wish to understand it really deeply, and to be able to get better and better at it is really deep and sincere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful language. I love the phraseology, it helps me understand why Hiberno-English is like it is.<\/p>\n
“In some ways it makes me understand deep cultural frames of references that I find in Ireland and Irish people, so to me it\u2019s an incredible gift. Hard work, but an incredible gift.<\/p>\n
“T\u00e1 go leor le foghlaim f\u00f3s.\u201d (There\u2019s still a lot to learn.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
British Ambassador to Ireland Kara Owen meeting President Michael D Higgins at \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in. Photo: President of Ireland\/X<\/p>\n
As well as taking on the task of learning Irish, Ms Owen also said she has a number of family ties to Ireland, including ancestors in the northeast and southeast of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing back a bit, but yeah, both in my genetics. Many, many British people have some Irish DNA in their genetics and I\u2019m no different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my connections go back to County Wicklow, outside Castlemacadam, and also County Down, Newtownards, so both on my mother\u2019s side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Owen\u2019s ancestors left Ireland just after the Famine in the late 1850s, settling in the mining community she hails from in Cumbria.<\/p>\n
She also has a much more current connection to Ireland through her husband, who first she met in Indonesia. Both were in the western province of Aceh, where a peace deal had been brokered after years of conflict.<\/p>\n
![\"Kara](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/f131f7c7-6673-4c51-b7fa-b5c6039703b9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Kara Owen is the new British ambassador to Ireland (Pic credit: British Embassy)<\/p>\n
News in 90 Seconds – October 21st<\/p>\n
While Ms Owen was there as a British diplomat, her now husband, William Tierney, from Ballinasloe in Co Galway, was serving as a member of the Irish Defence Forces.<\/p>\n
It is easy to see who out of the couple won out in discussions over who would name their children. They share two daughters, Saoirse and L\u00edla.<\/p>\n
“I am probably the first British ambassador to have a daughter called Saoirse, and it\u2019s a name I absolutely adore. I think it should instil with her a sense of freedom to be herself.<\/p>\n
“My husband was kind of very uncompromising and non-negotiable about it. It\u2019s the name he wanted, and it\u2019s the name she has.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Owen\u2019s upbringing in west Cumbria saw her take what would not be described as the traditional route of a diplomat. She attended her local non-fee-paying school and received encouragement from her teachers to pursue the career she went on to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s far from diplomats I was reared kind of thing – to use an Irish phrase.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my teacher, my history teacher when I was 16, who clearly saw how much I loved political and diplomatic history, said \u2018You should think about being a diplomat\u2019, and I\u2019d never even heard about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She then went on to study history at the University of Sheffield before beginning her work in the UK Foreign Office shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n
On whether the traditional \u2018Oxbridge\u2019 nature of UK politics remains in place, Ms Owen said the culture has \u201cchanged a lot\u201d in her time but there is more work to be done.<\/p>\n
“We think a lot about how can we properly represent the country that we serve, and so we have put in place a lot of things to try and increase the diversity, we haven\u2019t got there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ms Owen met her husband, William Tierney, from Galway, when he was a serving member of the Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,8335,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,1181,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-137549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-darragh-nolan","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-rte","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}