ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND AT THE STATE DINNER ON THE OCCASION OF THE STATE VISIT
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND AT THE STATE DINNER ON THE OCCASION OF THE STATE VISIT OF THE GRAND DUKE OF LUXEMBOURG
Your Royal Highness, distinguished guests,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa to Ireland. I should more accurately, have welcomed your Royal Highness back to Ireland. For I understand that in your youth you came to Ireland to perfect your English and visited quite appropriately our very own Kingdom of Kerry.
Luxembourg and Ireland are of course already centuries old friends and more recently, partners in the European Union but your visit gives to both our peoples a special opportunity to deepen and develop that friendship. We are particularly pleased that you have chosen to come to Ireland so soon after succeeding your distinguished father as Grand Duke. Many of us remember well the State visit he made here ten years ago along with the Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte. Allow me to take this opportunity to ask you to convey to them, our warmest respects and good wishes. He and I enjoyed a long chat in Amman in Jordan several years ago when he shocked me by recalling the text of a speech I had given a few weeks earlier at Ampleforth. I thought he was taking his interest in Irish affairs to a level of remarkable diligence until he revealed that he was a past pupil of that great Benedictine school and so a recipient of their Newsletter in which I had featured in the most recent edition. But it brought home to me once again the smallness of our world and the wonder of the many simple ways in which we are woven into the fabric of each others lives. To have points of connection, to make points of connection is to open up the rich potential for friendship we each have to offer each other, whether as individuals or as nations.
History will record that the first Embassy of Ireland in Luxembourg was established only in 1974 but in truth, it could be said that our first ambassadors were the seventh-century Irish monks who – in accordance with the traditions of peregrinatio perpetua – made Luxembourg their home. None is more famous than St Willibrod. Having completed his studies in Ireland in 690, he began the journey that would bring him to his eventual home, Luxembourg, where he founded the abbey at Echternach. The Gospels illuminated at the scriptorium established in Echternach form an important part of Luxembourg’s patrimony and the shared Christian patrimony of Ireland and Luxembourg.
To mark your visit here and to give a wide audience a chance to appreciate that shared heritage, it is wonderful to see that Trinity College is hosting an exhibition of facsimiles of some of those great manuscripts at Echternach. And it is a great and historic honour that you have graciously agreed to lend us the Riesen Bibel ‑ the very first time that it has been exhibited outside Luxembourg. This is an act of generosity which is deeply appreciated and which offers a wonderful opportunity to those who want to know more about the story of Luxembourg, of Ireland and of our common European homeland.
If the Irish monks were teachers and role models, Luxembourg has certainly repaid the compliment because this tiny country of less than half a million people and 1000 square miles is a teacher and a role model for the rest of Europe. Luxembourg has been described as the role model of international finance, as a tiny country whose name is usually too big to fit on most maps of the country itself but which in its economic success and prosperity is the envy of most larger countries. Luxembourg has, it seems, arrived at a place that many others still aspire to. A founder member of Benelux and of the European Union, your country has shown in a powerful way the potential which smaller states have to shape not just their own destiny but the destiny of the European continent. The part played by Luxembourg has been and continues to be inspirational as I know from visits particularly to the smaller countries of Eastern Europe, which have applied for admission to the European Union. Their size worries them. Their experience of history has taught them to be wary of bigger neighbours. Your story convinces them that their future is best served working inside the Union with its mix of big and small, in that unique adventure in partnership where small does not mean powerless but rather is a remarkably effective opportunity to be heard far and wide.
It has taken some time for us in Ireland to recognise and appreciate the intangible benefits of EU membership. Accession in 1973 was a sort of homecoming for us, in the light of our long association with the European mainland but history had opened up a gap in that association and as a consequence there was a degree of diffidence on our part. For too long, our interaction with the external world had been experienced through the prism of our relationship with a single dominant neighbour and while prisms are useful instruments their effect is to distort and it served to skew our engagement with the rest of the world and to over-shadow our international relations.
Membership of the Union has allowed us to shatter this prism. Greater confidence and openness are now hallmarks of our international relations. Ireland’s foreign policy continues to be informed by our deep, earnest desire for a just and equitable world, but we now have the means to project that policy much further afield and more effectively than ever before. The sea change that our membership of the Union has effected cannot be overstated: there has been a manifest and healthy recalibration of relationships between Ireland and Britain, its most obvious offspring the Northern Ireland peace process; Ireland’s election to the Security Council, Pat Cox’s recent election as President of the European Parliament, the disarmament achievements of the New Agenda coalition, these are some of the hallmarks of an Ireland whose stature has grown internationally and whose self-confidence has been fuelled by the experience of Union membership and in particular of highly successful Union membership.
When we look at Luxembourg’s phenomenal successes on so many different fronts we also know that the future holds much to look forward to for both our countries. Your success, legendary in a swathe of spheres – from international finance, to industrial conglomerates to international satellite communications - from European statesmen, to modern pop radio culture and even to certain song contests in which Ireland herself has a not undistinguished history (!). What stands out in the telling of that success is the Grand Duchy’s remarkable success at adapting to changing circumstances. If Darwin is correct in his observation that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one that is most responsive to change, then Luxembourg’s future prosperity is clearly guaranteed.
Your country’s rapid transition from an agricultural to an industrial, to a service-based economy; your ability to absorb the thousands of trans-frontalier workers from neighbouring countries each day; your shift from isolation to deep engagement in regional and international organisations and the sudden creation of a large resident foreign population – many of whom are Irish – are all testament to Luxembourg’s ability to re-invent itself.
It seems paradoxical, therefore, that your motto should be ‘Mir wëlle bleiwen wât mir sinn’, ‘We want to remain what we are’! The paradox is resolved, however, because in the midst of all this change, Luxembourg has held fast to the roots upon which it was founded. By this recipe Luxembourg has proudly retained its own language, identity and culture, while comfortably absorbing successive changes, assimilating the best from its neighbours, remaining outward-looking, and positioning itself at the forefront of European integration.
Of all of the changes to have faced countries in recent years, globalisation has been the greatest. While this has created fantastic opportunities, it has brought new challenges to the global order too. The problems of the globalised world pay considerably less respect to frontiers than do the opportunities: disease, the environment, terrorism; the list is as worrying as it is long. There is no exclusive shield of protection which we can put on to prevent these things from affecting life in Ireland or Luxembourg and more than anything else these issues demand of us an active and responsible engagement with the rest of our neighbours on this earth.
Luxembourg, like Ireland, attaches a high priority to its overseas development aid programme, and I commend you warmly for joining that small band of nations which has already attained the UN’s target of 0.7% of GNP. Our own Overseas Development Aid budget has increased considerably and Ireland is on schedule to reach the U.N target by 2007. Your good example sets a focus and an agenda from which countless millions of our poor brothers and sisters will benefit. I know that agenda is one you both care very deeply about and I would like to commend also, the Grand Duchess for her work as a good‑will ambassador for UNESCO. Her support, particularly in the promotion of micro-credit, is of great value: time and again it has shown itself to be an extremely effective and productive way of delivering aid and that work epitomises the intelligence and sensitivity that the Grand Duchy applies to the distribution of its development aid.
From the ruins of post-war Europe, your citizens built one of the most prosperous countries in the world. With the memory fresh in their minds of the misery that had been, but with an inspired vision of what might be, little Luxembourg set about building a Union of neighbours that would consign the horrors of war and conflict to history. It was a giant of an idea for a tiny country, to dare to have a vision for all of Europe. Thirty years ago, Ireland signed up to that vision. A small island nation on Europe’s westernmost periphery opened itself to this amazing, miraculous adventure in transnational democratic partnership. The new networks and connections established since then have drawn us deeply into the heart of contemporary Europe and importantly they have opened up to us once again the roads travelled by those monks of old - revealing to us a remarkable reality that in this Union we are not among strangers but among very old friends. Ireland and Luxembourg have re-discovered a Celtic heritage, a Christian heritage which link us to each other through the warp and weft of many centuries. Now in this generation we add our imagination and genius to the bitter experience and the indomitable hope of our immediate predecessors as we do all that we can to make this Union a place to be proud of, a place where each citizen feels and is, centrally, supremely, important.
Your Royal Highness,
Your presence here this evening is clear evidence of the excellent state of relations between our two countries. I hope your visit will help reveal the potential for even greater co-operation between us at every level and in every sphere of endeavour. We both want the same things - to build a stable, prosperous and compassionate Europe, to bring hope to the world’s overlooked people, to see our children and grandchildren grow up in a peaceful continent and globe where cultural diversity is the source of healthy vitality, where human beings at last know the wastefulness of hatred and the transcendent power of love. You have shown us what one small nation can do and your faith in the power of partnership gives us hope that those noble ambitions are things we can and will achieve together.
I now invite all present to join me in a toast to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and to the well-being of his people. Op er Gesondheet (To your health).