REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INDEPENDENCE DAY LUNCHEON OF THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INDEPENDENCE DAY LUNCHEON OF THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas bheith anseo libh inniu ar an lá speisialta seo.
Chargé d’Affaires, President of the Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a pleasure to join the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland for its Independence Day Lunch. I owe thanks to Chamber President, Austin McCabe for the very kind invitation and to each of you for that warm welcome. Having celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in New York last year it seems only fair to celebrate the Fourth of July in Ireland.
I was in the tiny village of Labasheeda, County Clare earlier this week. It stands on the River Shannon close to the ocean and there I heard stories of how the emigrant ships would sound their hooters as they passed and young men and women would leave the field and the bog, gather their pitiful belongings and sail out in little boats to board the larger vessels that would take them to the United States and another world. They were drawn by America’s freedom, its opportunity, its democratic egalitarianism, its hope. These things we celebrate today for they are the very essence of the spirit of the Fourth of July.
The lived lives of millions of Irish men and women and their Irish–American children link this island and our powerful Western neighbour with bonds of kinship so strong that when America’s peace of heart was shattered by the events of 9/11, overwhelming grief brought Ireland to a standstill. Those same bonds brought the weight of the United States Administration and Congress behind this island’s peace process giving it an intensity of focus that greatly shortened the bumpy road to peace. We are delighted that President Bush has recently designated Ambassador Haass to continue his outstanding work in support of consolidating the peace process. For all its ups and downs the peace is consolidating, the arrears of history are being filled and the future is a place to look forward to.
Central to the “filling of those centuries arrears” to quote John Hewitt has been the quietly effective work of the International Fund for Ireland. Since its inception in the United States in 1987 it has worked many miracles, helping communities to grow in confidence, creating opportunities for partnerships and collaborations which the vanities of history had all but made impossible. That work of strengthening the peace-makers has been a vital ingredient in building a critical mass of people who are committed to peace and to the Good Friday Agreement.
These elements of Irish American friendship and collaboration have been hugely enhanced in recent times by the transformation of the economic links between us. The companies represented here today have helped to transform the Irish economy from one that missed the first industrial revolution by a mile, to one which is at the forefront of the second industrial revolution. Nostalgia cuts little ice in company accounts but there is little doubt that our cultural compatibility and easy friendship and trust have been critical resources in the success story of American investment in Ireland. You know better than most the extent to which business depends on trust and the human dynamics of good relationships. That is precisely why you create and sustain strong networks like this Chamber and through it develop links to chambers of commerce across the globe. My travels to the United States as President have often brought me into contact with members of many different Chambers and I know from experience just how mutually valuable the simple friendships established there can become in the world of commerce. As voluntary institutions their vitality and commitment can never be taken for granted and precisely because they are voluntary our debt of gratitude to them and to you is all the greater.
As a gateway to the considerable markets of the European Union, a place with a benign corporate climate, a highly educated workforce, a stable economy and no language problems, Ireland has attracted very considerable direct foreign investment. The U.S. represents about 65 per cent of that direct foreign investment in Ireland. American companies’ exports from Ireland exceed €26bn and over 90,000 people are employed in about 570 U.S. companies here. A particularly gratifying part of that story is that so many American companies have invested in the regions contributing to a balanced economic development throughout Ireland. Another remarkable part of the story is the phenomenal success of the transfer of skills and confidence to our indigenous sector which is now able to say that it is the ninth most important source of inward investment in the United States and an employer of tens of thousands of Americans.
Our shared ambition is to keep building on this success story, to keep bringing in the inward investors, to root them in Ireland so that the prosperity we have known for the first time in our history will be a sure gift to each new generation.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland will have a leading role to play in realising that ambition and I want to encourage you to sustain all those efforts despite the dark clouds that hang over the global economic climate and indeed precisely because those clouds will not disappear by accident. America has known her good days and her bad but a transcendent and indomitable can-do spirit characterises the United States and it always prises open a door that lets hope in. We look forward to a renewed and reinvigorated climate of commerce in the United States knowing that the benefits will soon flow two ways between us.
At his Presidential inauguration, Thomas Jefferson, the great author of the American Declaration of Independence espoused the policy of “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations”. Long may this policy prosper and grow.
Guím gach rath ar an gCumann agus gura fada buan sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.