REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT’S AWARD FOR CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE INAUGURAL MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT’S AWARD FOR CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS THURSDAY, 1ST MARCH
Tá mé iontach sásta bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to join you this morning at the invitation of Michael Clarke, Chairman, Institute of Management Consultancy (Northern Ireland) and David Duffy, President, Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers (Republic of Ireland). I am very grateful to both institutes for both the invitation and the singular honour of being the first recipient of the Management Consultant’s Award for Cross-Border Relations, an award bestowed by the Councils of both institutes.
There was a time not so long ago when the land border within the European Union with the least commerce across it was here on this island. That stark statistic which made no economic sense whatever was of course merely one manifestation of the long-standing absence of healthy cross-border relationships – history’s baleful legacy which we now address, wiser as we are to its cruel cost and curious as to the potential offered by co-operation and good neighbourliness.
This award itself is yet another visible sign of the road being travelled by so many people in promoting and building the fresh culture of respectful mutuality which will consolidate the peace and promote prosperity. That respectful mutuality is the founding value system of the European Union, the context in which our future is set. It made partners of the bitterest old enemies. It stopped Europe from being consumed by bloodshed, generation after generation. It is the founding value system of the model of social partnership which underpins the Republic’s stellar economic success. It helped transform a poor, underachieving country into the success story par excellence of the modern world. Agreements hammered out through tough dialogue by the most educated generation ever in Europe have transformed our present and our future, raising living standards, strengthening democracy, finding answers to problems which had eluded previous generations.
These are still very early years in the transformation process, so there is much to look forward to as collaboration enhances our competitive advantage, both north and south, and businesses gain a new momentum right across the island. There is a creative energy that comes from working together and facing, as we do, the sobering realities of the global market-place; it is wise to remember the old Irish saying – two shortens the journey.
Since 1999 InterTradeIreland, the all-island trade and business development body which is co-sponsored by the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment and the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland, has led the development of the island economy. It’s a concept rooted in the comfort provided by the Good Friday Agreement that Northern Ireland is and remains part of the United Kingdom unless and until its people decide otherwise. So those who mistrust or distrust all-island concepts for fear of hidden agendas have the utter reassurance that there is no agenda beyond the obvious one which is to work together where it makes sense to do so. Eight years on and the level of all-island business collaboration supported by InterTradeIreland is truly impressive and more than vindicates the pulling power, the added leverage of the concept of an island-wide economy. The portfolio of projects covers science, technology & innovation, sales & marketing, business capability improvement, business networks and business & economic research. It has identified the strategic advantage of all-island business networks that allow participating firms and organisations to combine resources, to gain knowledge, to enter markets that are otherwise beyond their reach. The two civil services, North and South, are engaged in a number of joint educational and research endeavours designed to burst open the broader imaginations that working together can inspire. We have had two very successful joint trade missions, one to India, the other to the Middle East. The Single Electricity market is on course for delivery later this year bringing enhanced competitiveness to a resource of fundamental concern to consumers and to business consumers especially.
The National Development Plan for 2007-2013, for the first time, sets out proposals for significant investment in new North/South projects which will enhance the lives of every single person living on this island. Last year the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference called for a comprehensive study on the all-island economy. The study, which was published last October, set out a compelling vision of a strong, competitive and socially inclusive island-economy with island-wide clusters whose strength and development are not unnecessarily inhibited by the existence of a political frontier. The momentum is gathering and now we need champions to take forward this shared plan for the best times ever known on this island. Both your institutes have been such champions and I know you have been pursuing the benefits of the recently signed co-operation agreement, facilitated by InterTradeIreland, to work together more closely for mutual benefit. If collaboration does not deliver what it promises, it will soon evaporate but it is my guess the opposite will happen. The landscape of the past is littered with the missed opportunities and the waste that flowed from failure to explore collaboration. Last Saturday in Croke Park we saw spectacularly the power that surges from working generously together. Let’s hope we see that power flood this island with its transforming power so that the best-educated generation ever to inhabit the island also builds the most successful era in its history. Let’s share the work, the profit and the pride.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh. Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
Thank you.