In 1928 Paul Harris visited Dublin for a meeting of the Rotary Club which had been the first to be started outside North America. On Wednesday June 6, he travelled South from Belfast to give a talk to the combined Dublin and Cork Clubs. For his address, Paul Harris chose a theme which he had already used in Belfast and which he was to use often during this 1928 tour. In it, he pointed out that Rotary had arrived at a period when it had gone beyond the criticisms of men like George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis and had become an international institution. A Dublin Club correspondent in the July edition of 'The Rotary Wheel' made the following comments about what was inevitably a rushed visit.

"What a chance Paul missed and how much he gained thereby! He came upon us so silently and suddenly, spoke a few words and was gone from among us with such speed, that even now we think of him more as an apparition than the living founder of the great moral movement of which we are so proud of being a part. He lost the acclamations of a record meeting, and the hospitality which Irishmen love to lavish on their honoured guests; but he gained on balance, because he left with those who met him at lunch the precious memory of a man worthy of the cause he has made his own for so many wearing years. A great cause and a lowly man. Rotary is too big now to suffer permanent damage even from its Founder, but it is easy to imagine the heart breaking disillusion which would have burst over us if a trace of the charlatan or the egoist or the spell binder had been discovered in Paul Harris while he was with us.

The only regret we have in the Dublin Club is that our welcome may have seemed too cold, that we did not rise quickly enough to the frenzy of hero-worship; in fact, however, the welcome was as cordial and sincere as warm hearts could make it though it lacked volume because of the unexpectedness of the visit; and we know now that Paul would spurn any who dared to worship him."

Terence Duncan in his History in Ireland called 'The Hub of the Wheel' wrote that "These were two unforgettable days (in Belfast and Dublin) during which Irish Rotarians had had an opportunity of meeting in person this simple and unassuming man, a truly great man, a leader of men." Before he left, the Dublin Club presented the President Emeritus with a shillelagh in honour of his visit.

After his Rotary meeting, Paul Harris went on to Aras an Uachtarain to meet William Cosgrave, the President of the Irish Free State, and was much impressed. There was time too for Harris to listen to some of the proceedings of the Dail, the Irish parliament, from a seat in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery before going to the harbour for the overnight sailing back to Liverpool. At the quay side, nearly every member of the Dublin Club had gathered to bid farewell to their guest.

 Basil Lewis