ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE CHICAGO COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS TUESDAY, 6TH MAY, 2003
Ireland’s Role in the World
Ta lúcháir mhór orm bheith libh tráthnóna. Míle buíochas libh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I would like to thank Marshall Bouton for his very kind words of introduction and John Madigan for his support for this event. It is my great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you tonight, and I thank you for your warm welcome. A strong, generations old tradition of kinship and friendship binds the peoples of Ireland and the United States. We are its fortunate inheritors and also its custodians, charged with the responsibility of renewing and strengthening those ties in our own time. That is what I hope will be the outcome of this visit and the opportunities it provides for updating each other on our respective countries changing environments.
Change seems to be the only constant in our contemporary world. The speed of change, the capriciousness of change, demands of us a remarkable level of flexibility and adaptability. My generation has experienced what is probably the most rapidly changing environment in Ireland’s history.
For decades a poor and oppressed Ireland exported its people to the United States.
Today an economically successful and dynamic Ireland exports its high-tech goods across the globe and a generation has been born into an Ireland which has reversed the tide of emigration for the first time in one hundred and fifty years. Alongside the journey from poverty to prosperity there has also been a remarkable journey from conflict to peace.
Throughout these changes, and in many different spheres, Ireland has benefited immeasurably from the assistance of our friends in the U.S., whether the inward investors who have helped drive forward Ireland’s economic fortunes, whether the donors to the American Ireland Funds who have supported so many reconciliation and anti-sectarianism projects or whether the successive Presidents, Special Envoy’s and politicians who have done so much to achieve lasting peace in Northern Ireland. We have been blessed in our friends and I am delighted to have this opportunity to express Ireland’s thanks to you all.
21st Century Ireland is a very different place from the third world Ireland of living memory. A self-confident and well-educated generation is fortunate to be living in a prosperous Ireland, which is well on the way to revealing the fullness of its own genius and knowing its own strength for the first time in its history.
The economic transformation that Ireland has undergone in latter times has attracted much international interest, and we have recently, and to our satisfaction, found ourselves held up as an economic role model for other small economies. Our economy has enjoyed continuous growth for more than a decade, averaging over 8% per year over the past five years. We have enjoyed the fastest growth in the OECD for the past six years and are now one of the largest exporters in the world on a per capita basis. Our standard of living has risen from 60% of the European Union average back in 1973 to 130% today. No one single factor explains such a phenomenal performance but among the many interplaying and crucial elements, foreign investment, particularly that from the United States, has been vitally important to Ireland’s success. 550 U.S. companies are among 1200 foreign companies based in Ireland today. They are drawn to us by a favourable corporate tax climate, an entrepreneurial, highly educated and flexible young workforce, a strong social partnership that contributes greatly to social stability, and an English speaking and culturally compatible environment from which to access the European Union with its huge consumer market. Ireland is currently the only English speaking country inside the Euro zone, a zone set to double its consumer market when the ten countries from the Baltic and Eastern Europe join the Union next May at a ceremony in Dublin.
Our indigenous sector has gone into a higher gear and its confidence and strength can be seen in the two way flow of investment between Ireland and the United States, for while U.S. companies based in Ireland employ over 90,000 people, Irish-owned companies based in the United States now employ some 65,000 people in sectors ranging from financial services to building materials, software and food ingredients. The U.S. is our second largest trading partner after Britain, evidence, if evidence were needed, that our two countries are bonded as firmly by contemporary economics as the legacy of history.
This year Ireland celebrates thirty years of membership of the European Union. That membership has been central to the reshaping of modern Ireland. It redefined our place within Europe, broadened the context of our relations with the wider world, gave us a collegial forum in which to transcend the vanities of history and develop healthy relationships with the United Kingdom. The Union gave us the resources, the support and the opportunity to promote a culture of change and to achieve it rapidly. Successive Irish governments and the Irish people used those opportunities well to reveal a proud new story for Ireland. Now we have to ensure that we stay on this trajectory of success.
The ambition Ireland has for itself and its people, for peace, democracy, prosperity, social inclusion, and equality of opportunity, is an ambition we have for others far beyond our shores. We are proud that Ireland will assume the EU Presidency on the 1st January 2004 at a juncture as historic as the foundation of the Union itself. Ten countries will be welcomed back into the European family of nations, healing histories hurts, offering a wide vista of political and economic stability and a prosperous partnership between Europe’s diverse peoples. Ireland, as a consistent champion of enlargement is determined that Ireland and the European Union will meet the considerable challenge posed by this enlargement and harvest the great opportunities it presents.
Ireland is a first world country with a third world memory. A memory of endemic poverty and famine, a memory of being overlooked, a memory of the demoralising absence of opportunity. That memory has bred in us a deep passion for the suffering people of the world’s developing countries and a sense of responsibility for their future. That passion and responsibility is shared with our colleagues in the European Union who like us see that without real development and the hope it brings, peace in our world will sit uneasily on illusory foundations. As the Union expands, it is important to recognise that it remains wholly committed to playing a full role in international relations and in particular to continuing its leading role in overseas development assistance. The European Union - that is the Commission and Member States together - is by far the largest provider of official development assistance in the world.
As a young State and a small State, Ireland has never shied away from active involvement in global politics. We have been and remain deeply committed to the U.N. to its family of organisations and to its pursuit of an international legal order respected by all. For forty years our armed forces have served with distinction as U.N. peacekeepers in many parts of the world where conflict has wasted lives and shattered hopes with impunity. We are proud of that service just as we are proud too of our own commitment to establishing a just society and a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
The people of Northern Ireland have endured a bewildering cycle of violence and loss for many decades. A longstanding combustible mix of clashing constitutional ambitions, bigotry and sectarianism, of weak or absent protections for vulnerable citizens, conspired to keep Northern Ireland in the headlines as a place hopelessly mired in intractable violence. But the peacemakers did not give up and their patience was rewarded when the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 changed the political landscape on the island of Ireland forever. In the five years since the Agreement was signed, we have witnessed a period of historic change and of considerable, sustainable achievements. No-one with any wit expected this process to be easy but what is imperative now more than ever, is that everyone remains focused on exactly what it is we hope to achieve - a society of equals, a just society where all can have faith in the system of law, the forces of order, a tolerant society where religion or ethnicity are not barriers to opportunity, a society comfortable with itself and comfortable with the neighbours with whom it shares the island, a society which resolves its problems through respectful democratic dialogue and not by resort to violence. The Agreement can and will deliver that society. It is almost in sight but there is a distance yet to go. In recent months the Irish and British Governments and the pro-Agreement parties have focused on identifying outstanding areas of the Agreement where implementation has not yet been achieved. They have doubled and redoubled efforts to resolve them. For as long as lasting peace eludes us this work cannot stop and for as long as it eludes us we are short-changing the children of Ireland North and South. When the work of peace-building and trust-building is finally vindicated as it soon will be, a message of hope will go out from Northern Ireland to the many other conflict situations in the world where children still cower in blinding fear and wait for the kind of leadership that can deliver to them a future to look forward to.
That is what most of us want for our children - a future worth looking forward to. I am proud to be President of an Ireland which has created that future. In this city which became home for so many of Ireland’s emigrant children, they dreamed of such an Ireland, despaired of such an Ireland but sent home their hard-earned cents and dollars in hope and faith and love. Today’s Ireland owes them much. There is a saying - let those who drink the water remember with gratitude those who dug the well. I do that here in the hope that their children and children’s children for whom Chicago is home, will feel pride and vindication in the new Ireland.
Once again I thank you for inviting me to address you this evening and to say what a great pleasure it is to have this opportunity to visit this home from home for so many Irish people, the great city of Chicago. I will take home with me a store of fond memories of my time here, among them wonderful memories of this evening.
Go raibh maith agaibh.