Bob Geldof was awarded with the Freedom of the City of Dublin. He was presented with a scroll and crystal globe during the ceremony outside the Mansion House.
"It's raining and it's cold but it's a beautiful day and I can't think of a more beautiful day or more beautiful city to hold this in than Dublin.
"If London made me, then Dublin formed me. To be a freeman of one of the most free cities on the planet is indeed something. When I say it is a free city, the atmosphere here, the ability to say and do what you want, is freer her than in most cities around the world.
I have lived all my life in this town, which in reality during my childhood was a little brown, little pinched, little parochial town on the edge of Europe. You now have this expansive city, one that sort of marries the generosities of a nation.
"And it didn't seem to connect at all with the world that I was hearing coming in on the radio and imagining coming in on my head. In 1975, myself and a group of friends got together to make a band that would articulate the possibility of a different Ireland.
"I am equally proud the first ever [Irish] rock 'n' roll number one, indeed the first in a new wave, was from an Irish band called the Boomtown Rats, and it was wrote about this city and it was called Rat Trap."
