REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT DUNGANNON AND SOUTH TYRONE BOROUGH COUNCIL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT DUNGANNON AND SOUTH TYRONE BOROUGH COUNCIL WEDNESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2008
Thank you very much for your kind welcome. I am delighted to be with you today to meet the Council and members of these partnership groups who contribute so much to the vitality of life in this area. I'd like to say a special thank you to Mayor Barry Monteith and the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council for asking me to visit.
It is particularly important to me that the partnership groups could be here today, for they - the Cultural Diversity Programme, the Racial Equality Programme and the Cross Border Peace II Project - play an important role in supporting the community’s elected representatives, through their fantastic - if often unheralded - work at the community level.
This is a region which knows well the power of community, for it was here, in this historic community that the O'Neill clan located their stronghold. They chose this lofty, hilltop position for the view it afforded of all the surrounding counties. But the view Hugh O'Neill saw from this hilltop stretched beyond this island and further still to Europe. O’Neill saw his future as part of a wider European reality, a vision we follow today in Ireland North and South as partners in the European Union, the greatest adventure in democratic, partnership politics ever undertaken by humankind and as good neighbours on the island of Ireland, carving a shared future away from conflict and underpinned by consensus.
The Flight of the Earls was followed by an inward migration to this part of Ireland, that of settlers who came seeking to fulfil their own dreams, hopes and ambitions. That great migration shaped the Ulster and the Ireland we know today. The Plantation of Ulster created some of the first urban settlements in Ulster outside of Antrim and Down. It laid the foundations for an industrial revolution, making Ulster the dynamic, commercial and manufacturing centre that it became.
The Plantation, however, was a demographic exception. For many years a constant haemorrhaging of people was the fate of this unlucky island. Our emigrants, Irish and Scots-Irish, enriched and enlivened communities wherever they went. They formed new communities and forged new lives for themselves and their families.
Finally, however, the people of Ireland have the opportunity to live our lives in a radically altered environment, and to offer our children the possibility of growing up in an Ireland totally changed from that in which we grew up. Peace and devolved government have ushered in an era rich in potential and opportunity. All around, we can see the extraordinary potential that has, for so long and so wrongly, been suppressed, that “none of us is as good as all of us”, that the prosperity of one is linked to the prosperity of all.
Finally, we find ourselves in the happy position of welcoming others who have chosen to make this island their new home. I know that this community has welcomed workers from Portugal, Timor Leste, Poland and Lithuania. It is part of a pattern that is re-shaping all of Ireland. The new Irish are fulfilling dreams and ambitions just as the Ulster planters did before them, just as the Irish before them did in Manchester in England or the Scots-Irish did in Manchester, Kentucky.
It is testament to the courageous and committed political leadership, on all sides, from the Executive right down through to Borough Councils such as this, that Northern Ireland is consolidating its peace and achieving prosperity. The Irish Government is committed to this success - it is investing £400 million in Northern Ireland's roads, and other partnerships in energy, healthcare, trade, tourism, education and in developing the economies in the border regions are being rapidly rolled out.
But we here today know that formal partnerships at government level are just part of the story of our success. Much of today’s success rests on the myriad links that criss-cross a society that is made up, at its most fundamental level, of individuals. The partnership groups represented today allow those individuals to flourish, to fulfil their potential as human beings and to contribute to the very best of their abilities. They give rise to the sort of spirit and the unleashing of skills and talent that have allowed Dungannon to win the "Ulster In Bloom Best Kept Town Award" five times, with a sixth win, no doubt, just around the corner.
Even as we reflect on recent hopes and successes, however, we do not forget the past and the horrendous cost that bereaved communities, families and individuals - wives, husbands, parents and children - have had to bear before today’s peace was achieved. It is a measure of the strength of character of the people of Northern Ireland that, despite the widespread hurt, the reconciliation continues, patiently and with mutual respect and understanding. This requires leadership at government level and equally importantly, at community level.
Dungannon’s success proves that it has leaders with these qualities, throughout the community and throughout political life. They will be called upon again, not just to face the past, but also, optimistically, and with your help, to face the prospect of Ireland’s best-ever future.