PRESIDENT ATTENDS WESTERN WOMEN’S LINK 10th ANNIVERSERY SEMINAR Wednesday, June 6th
PRESIDENT ATTENDS WESTERN WOMEN’S LINK 10th ANNIVERSERY SEMINAR Wednesday, June 6th, Menlo Park Hotel, Galway.
Is mór an chúis áthais dom bheith anseo libh inniu agus tá mé buíoch díbh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom agus do m’fhear céile agus ar ndóigh mo mhic Justin.
I am delighted to be here today to join in your 10TH Anniversary celebrations and to have this opportunity to acknowledge the mammoth changes which have taken place in women’s lives over the past decade. I would particularly like to thank Breda Cahill for extending the invitation to me.
Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting a questions and answers session at St. Mary’s College in Derry.
The questions covered a wide spectrum of topical issues but one in particular which comes to mind addressed the question of the role of women. The students felt that “in many respects the role of President only achieved a high profile when a woman was elected”. I was asked why I thought that this was the case. A period in which a woman has held the office of President has also coincided with a time in which the dynamism and genius of women generally has been enabled to flourish. We in this country are not blessed with an abundance of natural resources. But one of our greatest resources is our people. And one of our greatest tragedies is the extent to which history, poverty and attitudes have conspired to waste so much of that resource in the past.
The history of women’s contribution to society down through the centuries has so often remained unacknowledged, unappreciated and underdeveloped. Women found their life’s chances restricted by a much narrower range of choices than those open to men. My daughters look at me in disbelief when I tell them that only in the middle of the last century did Cambridge University finally admit women and that many of those who feature in the history books as great statesmen of the early twentieth century were appalled at the idea of permitting women to vote. The culture we have come from was a culture where women were seen as beings who needed permission from those in authority, where the idea of a woman being empowered by her own human right to choice and equality of opportunity was radical beyond imagining.
The latter quarter of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a much better articulated, much more sustained set of arguments about the rights of women and importantly it saw the creation of formal laws and both formal and informal organizations to vindicate those rights.
Today’s Ireland with its economic success, its cultural self-assurance can be under no illusion that a large part of that success is due to the widening of the spheres of influence which women had access to. For many women, it was membership of a women’s group which reconfigured their lives and helped them to empower themselves, to become agents of change in their own lives, in their families, their communities and their country. The next generation will be freer again. They will have even more choices, more confidence, less looking over their shoulder, less explaining, less justifying to do. They will know their own power and they will transform Ireland into a country which is no longer flying on one wing but on two wings, a country where no one’s talent is wasted or ignored but where the talent of all is valued, respected, harvested and celebrated.
Some people already have an idea how exciting this part of the journey is going to be. You know it because by pooling talent, energy and resources, you have found it within yourselves to tackle problems like marginalisation, access to education, employment, training and enterprise opportunities. You have invested in new friendships, new interests, and you have stitched together a web of support and encouragement for one another. That web is now a force in itself, a life changing, life enhancing force which equips individuals with the courage and the confidence to believe in their own genius and to believe they can help to change those things which diminish the quality of life in your community.
Now, more than ever before, we need strong communities with an energetic core of voluntary endeavour. We need a healthy, robust civic spirit, where neighbour outreaches to neighbour. Many of you here today have spontaneously and generously volunteered your services to empower women to become more confident, more resourceful, better able to withstand the ups and downs of life, better able to use the opportunities that life offers. There is such tremendous energy among Irish women, particularly young women, at present that gives me pride and optimism for the future but it is worth remembering the old bible parable of the talents. Opportunities have to be used and used well. That I know is what you are committed to doing to ensuring that our society releases the talents of all our people into the human energy grid which is our biggest, our best our most natural resource.
Today in Ireland the walls which kept the talents of so many women locked into narrow spaces, are being dismantled. This successful, achieving, confident,transformed Ireland is proving, day in and day out, the integrity of the process of full political, social and economic inclusion of women.
I would like to applaud the commitment of your organisation and members in working to strengthen the development of women’s groups in the West of Ireland and working towards a more just and equal society for all.
Go n-éirí go geal libh.
Go raibh maith agaibh.