Remarks by President McAleese at a Reception for Slovak Community in Ireland hosted by HE Ján Gábor
Remarks by President McAleese at a Reception for the Slovak Community in Ireland hosted by HE Ján Gábor, Embassy of Slovak Rep.
Your excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Good Morning
Dobry den!
I thank you, Ambassador Gábor, Danka [Mrs Gáborová] and all the team at the Embassy for the warmth of your welcome and for gathering members of the Slovak community to meet us here. Martin and I are very happy to be able to spend some time with you this morning.
There is an old tradition in Ireland – bothántaíocht, as we call it or rambling – where the community would gather in a different house each evening for music, dancing, storytelling and, of course, local gossip. So today I am rambling into your Ambassador’s house to get to know our new neighbours and to extend to you and the Slovakian community in Ireland a warm Irish welcome
Some of you are here just a short time, others longer. Some will stay for a short time, others will make their lives here. We are grateful for the contribution you make to our country with your own unique talents and skills and for the way in which your Slovakian culture enriches and deepens Irish life and imagination.
Martin and I have visited your beautiful country twice. The first visit was a State Visit, the first Irish State Visit to the Slovak Republic back in 2003. We found great friends in then President Rudolph Schuster and his wife Irena. We fell in love with Bratislava’s Old Town district and we learnt about the parallels between Ireland and Slovakia. Both our countries struggled to achieve their freedom. Our national identity played a considerable role in keeping alive the flames of hope that eventually translated into our emergence as modern independent democracies.
Both our countries are intimately familiar with emigration and with the mixed blessings that it brings - the heartache of separation but also the immense pride in our compatriots’ achievements abroad. We share a love of music and the arts – traditions which have given us comfort and a sense of community in more troubled times. There are so many historical and present-day parallels between our two countries that we have, I believe, an instinctive understanding of one another.
It was an honour for me to welcome Prime Minister Dzurinda on the Day of Welcomes in Dublin just over two years ago when Slovakia took her rightful place at the table of the European Union.
It is exhilarating to see how quickly the ties between our two countries have grown since the Day of Welcomes in 2004. Today there are over 20,000 Slovaks in all parts of Ireland. Several Irish companies from diverse sectors of the economy – plastics, information technology, engineering and property - are active in Slovakia. We now have direct Dublin-Brastislava flights which have considerably reduced the time and cost involved in travelling between two countries located at opposite ends of the Union.
I have learnt recently of another intriguing connection between both our countries – one where an old sporting tradition of ours is being given a new twist in Slovakia. The ash that grows along the banks of the Danube is now being used to make hurleys in Slovakia for export to Ireland, for use in the game of hurling. Hurling has been played in Ireland since long before the arrival of Christianity. It is treasured as part of our national identity and I look forward to the day when a young Irish citizen of Slovakian birth or background lifts a hurl for his or her county on the hallowed ground of Croke Park. Jack Carey, a member of a great Kilkenny hurling family, who has made his home in Slovakia and who is behind the trade in Slovakian hurley sticks, would be very proud indeed to see such a day.
I hope you and your children will find it easy and rewarding to enter fully into Irish life. We are a very lucky generation to have all these chances to get to know one another as close friends and neighbours, in ways that no other generation has ever known. We are living the European Union dream. You bring Slovakia to the very heart of Irish life and you bring Ireland deep into life in Slovakia. I hope that through your lives and the shared memories they create that Ireland’s relations with Slovakia will continue to flower and flourish in the years ahead.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir!
Dakujem