REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A LUNCH HOSTED BY THE IRELAND FUND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A LUNCH HOSTED BY THE IRELAND FUND IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE NEW ZEALAND ANTARCTIC HERITAGE TRUST
Minister Tizard,
Committee Members of the Ireland Fund of New Zealand, Members of the Board of Trustees of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa
It is a great delight to be here, to be in your company and that of the inspirational Sir Edmund Hillary. I thank the Ireland Fund of New Zealand, in association with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, for their kind invitation to this very special lunch.
It is a chance even as we make new friendships and networks over a shared meal, to reflect on the strong familial relationship between Ireland and New Zealand. The strength of the relationship is exemplified by the work of New Zealand Ireland Fund which has been such a faithful companion on the difficult but at last successful journey to peace and reconciliation in Ireland. In Northern Ireland old enemies now work well together in a new Government and though the ending of the old sectarian culture is still a work in progress there is a widespread and palpable new mood of hope. The once fraught cross-border relationships are now characterised by increased good neighbourliness and partnership on many issues of common interest. Relations between Westminster and Dublin are the warmest and most collegial they have been in the history of the two islands.
While conflicts such as ours are often bedevilled by too many memories, too much focus on the past, on the road to this new chapter we have benefited from reopening some old chapters, especially those concerning the quarter of a million Irish men who fought in the First World War. Fifty thousand of them died. They came from all over Ireland. The vast majority were Catholics and Irish Nationalists and they fought side by side with their Protestant Unionists comrades, dying together in their thousands during the Battle of the Somme. Now they share a new memorial in Messines in Belgium and in Ireland North and South we have come to see them as a valuable shared memory and a rich opportunity for shared pride. So something which once divided us bitterly now brings us powerfully together. That same story unites us with New Zealand too. Irish men fought in Irish regiments and in New Zealand regiments. They fell at Gallipoli, that fated name that marks the New Zealand psyche in much the same way that the Easter rising of 1916 marks ours.
Other things link and mark us, inspire and uplift us, among them the heroic story of the brave explorers who opened up the Antarctic at the beginning of the last century. Those expeditions led by legends like Irishman, Ernest Shackleton, and Englishman Robert Scott, made legends too of their companions: men like Tom Crean, from Annascaul, Co. Kerry and New Zealander Frank Worsley. Their endless curiosity, and bravery, their love of life and love of this earth, have left us an enduring challenge to know our world profoundly, to respect it utterly and to take responsibility in our time for the times yet to come. The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust’s valuable work to preserve this formidable legacy is commendable. I am delighted to be able to lend my support and that of the Irish government to the campaign by the Trust to restore the Polar expeditionary huts of both expeditions. More and more we are beginning to understand that these magnificent landscapes that seem so remote and unreachable are sending us up front and very personal urgent messages about the effects of our behaviour that are vital to our very survival. I hope that both Ireland and New Zealand will be strong voices in our world for a new global culture of care for our planet, a culture that starts in every heart and every home.
Most Irish who came to New Zealand did not come as Antarctic explorers like Tom Crean but as people in search of a place where they could find a job, and put food on the table, a place of opportunity. For a century and a half Ireland’s biggest and best export was her people, driven out by famine, by poverty and by politics. They came burdened with heartache for home but with the determination to grow a new heart for their new homeland. They made good lives here and helped to make New Zealand the wonderful society it is today. They also founded the All-Blacks and gave them their first captain, Donegal man Dave Gallagher. In our regular defeats at the hands of the All Blacks we might wish he had stayed home but in truth we are looking forward to our next match in Dublin when the Irish and the All Blacks will play in our famous Croke Park which is of course named after Archbishop Croke one-time Bishop of Auckland. Sounds like the recipe for a draw…
Today we meet as kin to one another, our histories inextricably woven together, so embedded in each others’ stories that the story of Ireland cannot be told without telling of New Zealand and the story of New Zealand also needs the story of Ireland to complete its own narrative. But now a new generation in both countries is writing a very different chapter, educated, successful, confident, entrepreneurial, they are doing all sorts of business with each other unfazed by distance, encouraged by the huge cultural compatibility and the new technologies that bridge the gap between us so well. They are a talented, problem-solving generation, ambitious for themselves, their respective countries and their planet. We may be rivals on the rugby pitch but in truth are the very best of friends thanks to so much human endeavour over long generations and thanks to you who in our day work so well to renew, refresh and strengthen those ties that bind.