Remarks at Civic Reception in Galway County Council
24th February 2012
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid seo. Tá me buíoch dibh as an cuireadh agus an fáilte forchaoin a chur sibh romham.
Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen
I am delighted to be back here at home in Galway today for this Civic Reception. I would like to thank Mayor of County Galway, Councillor Michael Maher for his kind invitation to join you all this afternoon. Many thanks also to County Manager Martina Moloney and to all of the Councillors for their endorsement, bestowing this Civic honour on me.
It has been somewhat of a whirlwind experience since I was inaugurated as the 9th President on the 11th of November. But nonetheless, it is a journey that I have enjoyed immensely so far.
To be recognised by one’s peers is always a special accolade but to be recognised by your own people is truly a heart warming experience. Here in Galway, I certainly feel that I am among my own people; people who welcomed me to their city and county many decades ago and who welcomed me and my family into the heart of their community. And what a rich community it is – one that respects and values scholarship, sport, language (especially our own native language) and the arts.
I have come to love Galway for many reasons. As a student at the then UCG, I fell in love with the campus and was privileged to have the opportunity to return as a teacher where I formed so many friendships among the student and academic bodies. Even though I learned my Irish in Munster, Galway was, of course, a wonderful home in which I could enjoy and express my love of our native language. And when it came to the sports field, what place could offer such an eclectic range of possibilities than Galway. I quickly learned that this rich variety was only exceeded by the passion in which each of these sports was followed by their informed, if subjective, fans.
You will be aware of my deep love of the arts over many years. The arts truly create an identity of what we are, it can give us a lift in often troubled times. Galway County Council has consistently adopted a strategic and integrated approach to arts provision and development, working in partnership with key local agencies and providers in other sectors such as Health, Education and Tourism. This often invisible work reaches out to more vulnerable citizens improving their quality of life through engagement with the arts. In this regard, I recall with great respect the early work of the Galway Arts Officers. And Galway is consistently in the vanguard when it comes to the Arts.
Galway and its surrounding region is a significant centre for film and audio-visual culture in Ireland. The Irish Film Board has its Headquarters here in Galway while TG4 is located in Baile na hAbhann. It is home to a number of independent production companies which are involved in making work for broadcast in Ireland trí Gaeilge agus Béarla and for exhibition abroad. In addition, the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, established in 2003 at NUIG offers both graduate and postgraduate programmes in film while the Cluain Mhuire campus of the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology provides graduate programmes in film and television production.
Helping those students become practitioners, the Galway Film Centre is a wonderful resource organisation for film-makers in Galway city and county. The Centre also provides public access to film through community participation, it hosts Screen West - a dedicated website resource for film production in the west – and in 2011 it established the Galway Film Partnership to provide logistical support for film and television productions on location in Galway. Galway’s love affair with film is perhaps most publicly captured and celebrated in the Galway Film Fleadh. One of three major film festivals in Ireland, the Fleadh has an important role to play in providing for, and promoting interest in, cultural cinema in Galway.
Irish people have high levels of accomplishment in the arts and deep affinity with the practice of the arts. And Galway is certainly no exception to this. Names such as
Mairtín Ó Direáin, Walter Macken, Liam Ó Flaithearta and Pádraig Ó Conaire come immediately to mind. In more recent years, people like Garry Hynes and the late Mick Lally were major drivers and advocates of the arts. Ireland in general, and Galway in particular, has a deeply-embedded and distinctive tradition of story-telling, image-making and music.
However, that tradition is a living thing, requiring to be nurtured and that nurturing needs investment of effort and resources – the business case for which, in the current context, has to be presented ever more cogently and compellingly. The argument for public subsidy of the arts derives from the same principle as public subsidy of a range of public services: they are a social good which, if left to market-place forces, would not survive, or would exist in a fashion so distorted that the public good would not be best served. Public health, education, parks, libraries, transport and cultural ‘goods and services’ share common cause in their varying claims on the public purse by virtue of their public benefit.
It is not enough, of course, to assert that the arts confer public benefit. This must be argued coherently, from a range of perspectives, and - increasingly - the expectation is that the argument must be evidence-based. I believe that the case for continued investment in the arts is indeed a compelling one. The arts are and always have been fundamental human enterprises. When we seek to know the nature of a people in another place or time, we go to their buildings, artefacts, rituals, stories and music. When we seek to understand the meaning of love, or death, or war, or ambition, we go to music, drama, art, literature and film. In making art we make ourselves. In understanding art we understand ourselves.
The arts are central to cultural identity. This comprises the common experience of all humans as a species and also the distinctive identity of particular peoples, places and times.
Ireland’s cultural industries - especially film, music, digital media - depend in large measure on the investment made in core arts infrastructure. Our portion of the global cultural industry economy and our cultural profile abroad rest critically on domestic arts investment.
People come to Ireland in some significant measure because of our cultural ‘reputation’. Visitors seek a differentiated experience in an increasingly globalised and homogenised world. The arts makes Ireland distinctive. The distinctive and memorable elements of a tourist’s experience are often bound up with culture and entertainment. Especially when our climate is ‘unreliable’ it is critical to have high-quality cultural infrastructure and programming. The social and economic benefits are clear. The success of the Druid, Macnas, Taibhdearc na Gaillimhe and of course the annual Arts Festival have placed Galway at the forefront of this cultural nexus and droves of people from the four corners of the world have been enthralled with their experiences of outstanding cultural performances in Galway.
The arts operate within a public sphere characterised by a growing population and distinguished by ever-increasing levels of education and by ethnic and cultural diversity. Addressing the needs and expectations of an engaged citizenship is an ever more pressing challenge for arts organisations and indeed for all State Agencies that provide public services.
I am very conscious of the challenges that all Local Authorities currently face in seeking to maintain quality services for its citizens in the context of constrained financial resources.
In Galway, the City and County Councils have always shown themselves to be very flexible, progressive and imaginative in how they provided optimum services despite the limitations of finite resources.
A large part of this success stemmed from the quality of the partnerships that were established with the various local organisations in the voluntary sectors – partnerships that created dynamic synergies, that provided liberating possibilities for active participation by citizens and that converted unused potential and latent talent into productive activity and creative expression. I am confident that, with these same qualities of resourcefulness, imagination and trust in the transformative capacity of our own people, the Local Authorities here will continue to ensure that Galway City and County remains one of the best regions of the country in which to live, work, raise a family, be educated and fully develop as a rounded human being.
A visit home to Galway always refreshes my mind and gladdens my heart. However, this particular homecoming is particularly special for Sabina and me. We thank you most sincerely for this Civic Reception and are very grateful to the Mayor, the Councillors and staff of Galway County Council for their kindness and courtesy in hosting this wonderful occasion. Galway and its people will always be in our hearts and, irrespective of where we may be, Galway will always be home.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.