REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION, CHESTER BEATTY LIBRARY, DUBLIN
Dia dhíbh a chairde, Thank you for inviting me to this National Conference of the European Cultural Foundation and thank you for the welcome. Most of all though thank you for focussing on the social and cultural implications of immigration and the integration of newcomers into Irish society. It’s a subject we need to interrogate and understand well if we are to successfully continue to build the open, inclusive and democratic society our Constitution pledges us to and this Foundation works for.
In relative terms, Ireland has over the past ten years or so experienced a very large population inflow by historical standards here or elsewhere. International economic migration has always taken place and the Irish as a nation have availed of it when forced, or choosing, to seek new opportunities overseas. We were not used to substantial migration flows in the opposite direction until our unprecedented prosperity acted as a magnet for people from Europe and beyond to come here to live and work. In a short space of time our schools, parishes and local communities were coping with men, women and children from a wide variety of countries and cultures, speaking many different languages and all hoping, planning to make Ireland their home and each one of them wondering what would it be like to live here, how would they be regarded, would they be made welcome?
Most of our new citizens arrived just as the Peace Process was gaining traction after generations of conflict. We already knew that superficial homogeneity was no recipe for good relations. We knew from first principles how easy it was for neighbours to live cheek by jowl and yet live in dangerously profound ignorance of each other’s identity, beliefs and culture. So we had learnt the hard way that healthy, safe and happy communities have to invest in good community relations based on respect for difference and meaningful opportunities to grow in mutual understanding. Failure to do that produces an unhealthy culture of wasted opportunities and sometimes wasted lives. Our experience as an emigrating nation had given us a profound insight into the sheer misery and shortsightedness of racist bias and sectarian bigotry. In a number of countries where Irish emigrants made their home, we were so often on the wrong end of it. The “No Irish need apply” signs were truly international. Yet history had vindicated us a million times over as our emigrants and their successors revealed the power of their genius in so many spheres and proved the point that migration offers enormous, fresh potential for enhancement to both the host country and the migrant.
So would we bring our distilled wisdom and experience to bear on the interface between different cultures, religions, allegiances and world views in our time and in our own country? Would we both talk and walk the céad míle fáilte? The report you are launching today gives us a powerful insight into those questions for, of course, it looks precisely at how people are currently living their lives in our multicultural society. The conversations you devised are conversations we needed to have for they go right to the heart of the matter by engaging the host community and our immigrants in an honest dialogue.
This type of direct yet controlled engagement is essential for intercultural dialogue. It offers a safe and welcoming space in which to tease out the essential issues, to analyse them and work together to find solutions. It opened up the opportunity to move beyond stereotype or simple rationalisations, exposing hidden yet felt intercultural realities that impinge very differently on different constituencies. Your project recognised that people can be touched by intercultural issues in different ways depending on their circumstances and so a ‘one size fits all’ response may not in fact fit anyone.
Thanks to the multitude of personal experiences, anecdotes from the lived lives of people from all parts of our communities and from all backgrounds, you have been able to paint for us a complex and intricate picture which reflects the views and attitudes broadly held in both the host and immigrant communities. With the publication of today's report, we see the outcomes of the whole exercise, from the initial conversations on a local basis through to the national conversation involving actors such as the HSE, the National Parents’ Council and the GAA. It is true that Ireland is a somewhat different place than we were in 2008 when this project started; the economy has contracted sharply and there has been a consequent fall in immigration as well as the departure of some immigrants for home or for other countries. But many have stayed and who is to say what the future will bring for we surely do not intend to stay mired in the economic doldrums and have made huge sacrifices to ensure that we won’t - sacrifices that are already beginning to pay off. So your recommendations and your advocacy of ongoing intercultural dialogue will continue to require priority attention.
As Ireland’s young people begin once again to look to jobs and lives abroad, we have to hope that someone in their new host countries has given thought to how they can be easily and happily integrated into their new homes and communities so that they can give their best and realise their fullest potential. We hope that they will soon return to us as our economy picks up and that when they do they will find in their homeland a place which, as a likely destination country for immigrants, has consciously continued to evolve into a tolerant, and comfortably diverse, intercultural society.
Your report deals with this delicate issue with great sensitivity. You have given all of us the opportunity to speak of our own experiences, take stock of how interculturalism affects our daily lives and have guided us towards the mutual understanding and effective action which is so essential for the development of the tolerant, peaceful, safe and inclusive society where, in the ambitious words of the Proclamation, all our nation’s children are cherished equally. Good and bad attitudes both start in hearts and homes. They are taught and they are learnt. Bad attitudes diminish all of us, increase our vulnerability and riddle our society with unhealthy contradictions. Good attitudes give us peace of mind and make Ireland a good place to grow up and grow old whoever you are, wherever you are from. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.