REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE NEWRY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & TRADE LUNCH
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE NEWRY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & TRADE LUNCH, CANAL COURT HOTEL, NEWRY, WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPT
Is mór an onóir agus an pléisiúr domsa agus do m’fhear céile, Martin, bheith anseo libh tráthnóna. Ba mhaith linn ár mbuíochas a chur in iúl díbh go léir as an cuireadh agus as fáilte a bhí fíor agus fáirsing.
I am delighted to be here and I would like to thank Peter Murray for inviting me to join you this afternoon. Coming back to Newry is always a personal pleasure though tinged with a lot of nostalgia for my weekly trips to Newry Market, dandering in and out of the shops on Hill Street and Monaghan Street, taking in the Shopping centres, lunch in the Boulevard. And how Newry has changed in recent years - after so many years of struggling with the baleful effects of the Troubles there is today a palpable energy and confidence that radiates out from the heart of Newry, a town when I left it, a city when I came back. It did not come about by coincidence, as each of you knows well. You are the people whose faith, hard work and sheer dogged determination has put it there. Every town needs commerce to create jobs and jobs to create commerce. To bring those jobs and create sustained prosperity you need the mix of great schools and further education, of commercial risk takers and entrepreneurs, the civic spirit and community pride, the political leadership, the social solidarity that Newry has painstakingly put together to bring forth the genius of the people, to let loose their best potential and together create this new future Newry is now living and looking forward to.
Newry has always been one of Ireland’s great crossroads. 250 years ago it was the Newry Canal which pushed it to prominence as the fourth largest port on the island with flourishing linen and glass trades. In latter years it has been the border which has been its challenge and its chance. Now a proud city, Newry has earned a reputation as a vibrant business hub, a haven for shoppers, a place of welcome and gateway to the magnificent Mournes and Carlingford Lough. That great natural beauty is a wonderful resource but by far the greatest natural resource this island has is the power and imagination, the hard work and enthusiasm, of the people who “make good things happen”. Increasingly too we are seeing good things happen on that north-south, cross border axis which is so essential to the life-blood of a border community and so essential to a very peripheral island community.
Newry, gateway city, is of course home to the North/South Business Body, InterTradeIreland, a body which works to the benefit of all of us living on this island whatever our politics or persuasion. Working together we can share the benefits of 200 percent of something good, working against one another we can all have 100 percent of nothing. As the Chair of InterTrade, Dr. Martin Naughton has said “Put business people in the same room and they will do business”.
Someone remarked to me that this was a very “lucky” time for Ireland. I replied with a saying of my grandmothers “you make your luck”. We are making our luck together in ways unthinkable such a short time ago. The temper of the times is changing. North South, East and West, we are growing more comfortable in each others company, more curious about the power of respectful partnership, where no one is trying to proseltyise the other to change their politics, but rather regarding each others unique set of gifts as a welcome source of additional possibilities.
By creating and embracing those possibilities, our political cards all turned up and on the table, we play to our strengths. That is the strength of the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement and the peace it has brought have given us the chance to emerge from behind our respective historic, emotional, political and social barricades and for the first time to feel the transformative, life enhancing power of joint endeavour. Thank you for all you have done through difficult times to bequeath to the emerging generation such a clearheaded, noble focus on the future. I hope you feel proud of this 21st century city Newry. You are surely entitled to. I know I do.
Go raibh maith agaibh.