REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 2007 GAISCE SUPPORTERS DINNER ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 2007 GAISCE SUPPORTERS DINNER ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN TUESDAY, 15 MAY, 2007
Tá fáilte romhaibh go léir inniu chuig an ócáid seo in Áras an Uachtaráin.
Welcome to Áras an Uachtaráin and to this Gaisce President’s Award Supporters Dinner where I get a chance to say thank you for all you do to help Ireland’s young men and women grow strong , confident, caring, resilient and successful.
Last year, as you know, we celebrated the 21st Anniversary of Gaisce and we looked back with pride at the stories of more than 140,000 young people who in that time have taken on and seen the Gaisce challenge through. No law commanded them to it except the law of curiosity and love of life. There were a million other things that could have distracted them but they kept focussed on the Gaisce journey. It brought them deep into themselves, revealing and testing their strengths and weaknesses. It helped them grow in insight, wisdom and skill. It brought them a journey into life itself - its beauties and its crosses. It brought them safely through a deliberately tough course. Above all, it brought them if not to a destination then to a great starting point for good adult lives, for these young men and women are people to be proud of - the kind of people who make good friends, colleagues, partners, spouses, employees, employers, community leaders - the very kind of active enthusiastic and responsible citizens our country needs and depends on for its civic strength.
They grow through Gaisce and it is thanks to you that they do. It is thanks to you that they invest in their own idealism and fulfilment and in so doing invest in our idealism and fulfilment as a society.
Gaisce is not a competition except that in doing it and committing to its discipline participants compete with their lazy selves, their self- pitying selves, their self-indulgent selves, their give-up selves. Young men and women of all backgrounds and ability levels can aim for and achieve gold and they do in numbers greater here in Ireland than in any equivalent scheme among the many around the world.
We have never had a more educated, confident and hopeful generation in Ireland. They are growing up in a prosperous and multicultural country, a place that is their natural hinterland but is only the recently adopted hinterland of their parents and grandparents. What they make, as a generation, of the gifts and opportunities they have been given, only time will reveal but we know that the Gaisce participants among them will do good things, humanly decent things, things that will bring pride to themselves, their families and their countries. We know because they haven’t waited for life to test them - they have volunteered to face tough things long before many of them had to.
They have been able to do that because of Gaisce- in other words because of the chances your support has allowed to flourish. To all of you and to all others who have contributed so much in different ways, may I say sincere thanks not just on behalf of the participants, the pals and the great Gaisce Board and staff but on behalf of Ireland itself which benefits so profoundly from your service to the young people of our country.
I look forward to meeting you all and I hope you enjoy your visit to the Áras.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.