REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE SMALL FIRMS ASSOCIATION ANNUAL LUNCH CROKE PARK
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE SMALL FIRMS ASSOCIATION ANNUAL LUNCH CROKE PARK FRIDAY 21ST NOVEMBER 2008.
Dia dhíbh, a cháirde go léir. Tá mé iontach sásta bheith anseo libh inniu.
Good afternoon everybody and thank you for the warm welcome to your annual lunch and thank you to Patricia Callan for the invitation. Between the invitation and the event a lot has happened on the economic front, most of it unwelcome, worrying and far from resolved. We have seen the global economy flummoxed by a rapid series of setbacks which gathered the momentum of a hurricane with an unpredictable trajectory. It was Warren Buffet who wryly noted that “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” Right now neither view is particularly clear and so, sitting as we are in a moment of real uncertainty, you didn’t ask me here to fill space with false optimism. You are standing right in the eye of the storm. The tap of consumer spending has been turned down a clear notch by consumer angst, a pervasive and understandable fear that is a consequence of watching institutions and structures which looked solid, dependable and enduring, suddenly display a fragility and vulnerability that until now had been hidden.
This is absolutely not how we would like things to be nor is it how we thought things would be only a short time ago when we were accustomed to steady growth and confident economic dynamism. That was then, this is now and although there is an air of unreality about all of this given its suddenness and its extent, this is our new and real context. It is what we now have to get through and get beyond.
If ever there was a moment when we needed people who are accustomed to living with risk and with the uncertainty of fickle markets and customers, then this is it. Here in this room is a veritable library of experience, wisdom, coping skills, pragmatism, imagination, creativity, determination, resilience, hard-headed realism, hard work and insight. If any of us were packing a bag of the things we will need for the trek that is ahead of us, then we would be looking just for those things. They are the hallmark of small enterprises, and these things which were necessary for the establishment and maintenance of successful businesses are also necessary to carry all of us through the choppy waters ahead as a civic society, as a nation that is based upon community and not an individuated place where we are left to our own devices.
Our government, like many others, has intervened to bolster its national banking system. That leadership has been crucial as has the interventions of the European Union and the G20. We hope their deliberations will help create a global financial system that is properly and effectively regulated and which is underpinned by decent human values and takes care also of the interests of the less well off in our world community. The debate is global and the decisions may be too but the effects are local and so this is a hugely important debate in which all voices need to be heard, those who are hurting at the end of the line, in particular. As unemployment starts to creep upwards for the first time in many years, with harsh impacts on family and community life, we need to look to our strengths to see how we can best adapt to these changed circumstances and revitalise our homes, hearts and our homeland with hope.
We have had a remarkable success story in job creation and we have two million people in jobs, a statistic that no-one would have believed possible less than a generation ago. We have a decent track record as problem-solvers, as changers of history. This is the generation that turned Ireland from poverty to wealth, from underachievement to high achievement, from ceann faoi to can do, from out of date to state of the art. This is the generation that reversed emigration for the first time in a century and a half. This is the best-educated generation we have ever had. Now it needs to be the most hard-headed and realistic generation. Those of us who were around in the eighties and, indeed, any of us who did not come down in the last shower know that this too shall pass but our task is to ensure that, in the process of its passing, as a civic society, rich in community life, we look out for one another as never before, understanding that some level of sacrifice will be needed to get to firmer ground.
Ireland’s unique social partnership model devised 21 years ago brought considerable economic and industrial stability and bound every sector of society into a joint endeavour which, along with low corporation tax and high levels of education, set the scene for an unprecedented uplift in our standard of living. Now that spirit of unity and common focus is what will steady the ship of state which we all sail on as it hits the storms that assail the globe. The Irish proverb said it long ago “Ní neart go chur le cheile", our very best strength lies in working together. There is a chemical reaction that can only be released when all those individual parts work together. There is many an old heavy wardrobe that would still be sitting in the wrong place but for the fact that two or three were able to lift it where one could not. We are challenged now to create that alchemy for this is surely a heavy lift moment. Can we do it? Time will answer that, meanwhile we use the time to try.
Our message to the inward investors who have come here and those who are in the market for places to put down roots has to be loud and clear, that we are a competitive, compatible, innovative, business-friendly environment and we are out there hustling for business with a formidable determination. Earlier this week I hosted a delegation in Áras an Uachtaráin from the Irish Technology Leadership Group, a new network of Irish and Irish American executives based in California which brought experts and indeed competitors from all the big names in research and development in Silicon Valley, plus venture capitalists, to Ireland. These are men and women who are Irish or of Irish heritage who are utterly committed to finding, along with us, the pathways to the new investments and technologies of the future that will sustain our growth and keep us to the forefront of the knowledge economies. We have an enormous global family who put us on the map in every part of the world.
And in these times that we are in, our emigrants are both an inspiration to us but also potentially vital partners around the global economy in which all businesses must operate today. By inspiration I mean that we can clearly draw much in these days from the amazing stories of generations of our people who left these shores in far more difficult times and circumstances than today, landed in new worlds and went on, particularly in the US, to achieve such enormous success. I have been saying in recent weeks that if our forebears, as they prepared to embark on those coffin ships, not knowing if they would even make the passage alive, were given the choice between the challenges facing them and those facing us today, they would take ours every time and with a broad smile on their faces at that!
And so, resilience, strength of character, the ability to dig deep, and the wisdom to stick together, these are all qualities which are deep in our DNA and available to us to draw on now. In more practical terms, we have a marketing tool in that great emigrant to Ireland, St. Patrick, who opens doors exclusively to us worldwide that other countries are baffled and bemused by. We have strengths in the success stories generated by Enterprise Ireland, the IDA, by each of you and by our workforce. We have phenomenal strength and resilience in our communities. A Romanian politician said this to me just two months ago as he talked about his ambitions for his country. He admired everything Ireland had achieved but one thing above all he dearly wanted for his country and that was our style of community where we look out for one another. And by the way, where better to remind ourselves about the power of community than here in this amazing Field of Dreams that is Croke Park, headquarters of Cumann Lúthchleas Gael, a towering exemplar of Irish community life at its best and a truly fitting location for your gathering as you seek to muster the qualities of teamwork and working for each other that will get us through these times.
I thank the SFA members all over the country for their courage, their commitment to our economy and our communities and for the contribution they are making to the creation of a new economic order and value system which will hopefully emerge from these hard-lesson days. Thank you again for this invitation to your annual lunch and I surely hope that in the short distance between this annual lunch and the next we will see the ebbing of the volatility of recent months, the return of consumer confidence and the visible signs of green shoots once again.
Gurb fada buan sibh ‘s go raith míle maith agaibh go léir.