A gala dinner held to mark the 1916 Irish uprising against British rule and the death of thousands of Irish soldiers at the Battle of the Somme has raised around $8,000 for charity.

Now the cash raised from the gala black tie event will be donated to the Eliza DoLittle organisation, which organises food deliveries to those in need.

Bermuda Irish Association president Brian Quinn said: “It went fantastically well, everyone loved it.”

About 250 people attended the event, held at the Hamilton Princess last Saturday.

The guest speaker George Hook, a broadcaster and journalist from Ireland, covered the history of Ireland from the 1916 uprising in Dublin, the partition of the country in 1922 into Saorstat Eireann — the Irish Free State — and Northern Ireland, which remains part of the UK, up to Ireland’s modern status as a republic.

Mr Hook said that Ireland had moved from a conservative, largely Catholic society to a modern democracy, as witnessed by the country’s overwhelming backing for the legalisation of gay marriage last year.

And Governor George Fergusson, who played a key role in the Good Friday agreement signed between the Irish and British governments in 1998, which ended decades of conflict between Republican and Loyalist groups in Northern Ireland, discussed his bird’s eye view of the talks. The Good Friday agreement implemented power-sharing between the two sides in Northern Ireland and led to the decommissioning of weapons used by the opposing sides.

Mr Fergusson, who won a standing ovation, said that, only a few years ago, a UK Governor of an Overseas Territory would not have been at an event to commemorate the 1916 Rising, which saw Republican troops battling British soldiers on the streets of Dublin.

But he said it was a tribute to the advances in Irish-British relations since 1998 that he had been so warmly welcomed.

The dinner also marked the start of the Battle of the Somme a few months after the Easter Rising, which claimed the lives of 3,500 Irish soldiers, many of them from the 36th Ulster Division serving with the British Army.

Mr Fergusson said that the Republic of Ireland, which traditionally had not commemorated the First World War, now did, while British Armistice Day events now gave pride of place to the Irish Ambassador to the UK, who lays a wreath at the Cenotaph in London immediately after Britain’s own representatives and ahead of other ambassadors. Mr Quinn, who runs Granite Management in Hamilton, said: “It was a great tone set by George Hook and the Governor on the two countries coming together and the two communities coming together, despite their differences.

“It was very important to have the Governor there.

“A few years ago, the Governor would not have been at the event, nor would he have been invited.”

Mr Quinn added: “In the last 20 years, between the Queen’s visit to Ireland and the president of Ireland visiting Britain, it’s a huge reconciliation between two divided countries.”

The event was sponsored by telecoms firm Digicel, Irish drinks companies Guinness and Jameson’s and Bermuda’s Docksiders bar and restaurant.