REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLACKROCK COLLEGE, BLACKROCK
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLACKROCK COLLEGE, BLACKROCK SUNDAY, 16TH MAY, 2010
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisúir dom bheith anseo inniu. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom. It is a great honour to be with you today as you come to the end of the celebrations in honour of the sesquicentenary of Blackrock College. It is a very special privilege to have been asked by the President of the College, Fr. Cormac O’Brolcháin to unveil the beautiful commemorative installation by Róisín de Buitléar which so firmly leaves the imprint of this century on a school which has spanned three centuries and many different Irelands. In fact so rapid today is the pace of change that there are virtually two different Irelands even from the start of these celebrations back in September 2009 to today.
We have learnt to our cost how very difficult it is to predict the future but we can at least attempt to shape it. When Père Jules Leman founded this College in 1860 in a very diminished and depressed post-Great Famine Ireland he inserted into Irish life a leavening agent of hope and action. He had an ambition to train personnel for missionary service in the Third World and to provide a first class education for Irish boys. A century and a half later we can see what he could not see – the fruits of his labours as they unfolded over the generations. Over 1,000 past pupils have gone on to missionary work in the developing world, tens of thousands of young men have been well educated thanks to hundreds of ancillary and teaching staff, among them my predecessor Eamon De Valera. We can count their numbers but we could never ever, no matter how mathematically gifted, count the fullness of their contribution, to Ireland and to the world, for wherever they have gone they have taken with them the charism of Blackrock College which formed and informed their values and their own vision.
Among both staff and pupils are names which have achieved the status of legend in so many spheres of life. Over the course of these sesquicentenary celebrations you will have fondly called many of them to mind. Some are long forgotten though their lives were for a time part of the warp and weft of Blackrock College just as it was part of the warp and weft of their lives throughout their lives. Whether remembered or forgotten, we call them all to mind on this special day when this beautiful abstract work, inspired by the teaching of Saint Paul, invites the passer-by to take time to look at it from different angles. Every single pupil and staff member brought to this place their own individual, unique angle and also their common commitment to a vision for humanity based on the great commandment to love one another. As Róisín de Buitléar’s work joins the excellent College Art collection, which already boasts very fine stained glass windows from that other great Irish female glass-worker Evie Hone, I hope it will inspire the generations to come in the next one hundred and fifty years.
Père Leman could not have known that Blackrock would survive and thrive into a future well beyond his lifetime. But knowing the ugliness of the past and the crying needs of the present he made a start, in service not to himself but in service to humanity. They say ‘tus maith is leath na h’oibre’ – a good start is half the work. Nothing could be truer in the case of this College. May the next one hundred and fifty years see the College flourish in an Ireland characterised by peace, a relentless and successful war on poverty at home and abroad and an educated, gracious and egalitarian people determined to show that it is possible to create and sustain a republic which cherishes all its children, all its citizens equally.
William Butler Yeats once said that “education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” On this day let us hope that the spark ignited by Père Leman 150 years ago will long continue to light fires of courage, confidence and curiosity in the hearts of Blackrock College’s pupils.