REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ACCORD CATHOLIC MARRIAGE CARE SERVICE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ACCORD CATHOLIC MARRIAGE CARE SERVICE, ST MUNCHIN’S COLLEGE, LIMERICK
Is mór an onóir agus pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh inniu agus ba mhaith liom mo bhíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as fáilte fiorchaoin.
Good afternoon everybody.
Thank you for that warm welcome and for your kind invitation to open this wonderful new centre. This place, just like ACCORD itself, is a resource and support for families coping with life’s many stresses and strains. The old Irish sean-fhocal says ‘Tus maith is leath na hoibre’ and few would deny that a good home life is the best start in life for any human being. Ireland has a reputation as a country characterised by the robustness and stability of family life and it is a great source of our individual empowerment and our civic strength.
A positive experience of family life helps prepare us for life’s challenges, opportunities, trials and tribulations. It builds resilience and confidence, tends towards producing problem solvers rather than problems. Where the experience of family life is negative, there are real risks of consequences that can profoundly damage a child’s life’s chances and skew that life cruelly out of kilter. So it really matters to each of us as individuals and all of us as community that the family, this precious vehicle for the safe rearing of children, is as strong, as effective and as skilled as it needs to be for its primary task of care.
Every generation has fretted, like ours, over the impact of social change on family life. Our lives and lifestyles have changed hugely, bringing benefits of widespread access to education, greater social mobility, greater opportunity and prosperity. Accompanying the good news is the bad news of the pressures and the temptations that blight many a home, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, money worries, unemployment, peer pressure on children and teenagers, discrimination, bigotry, all these things and more that lead to disrespect of others and of the self. There was no golden era when family life was unproblematic; in fact the past is characterised by a silence about the dark side of home life which allowed serious dysfunction to fester and go unresolved. Today that silence is being broken more and more as people open up their experiences, allowing us to learn, to grow and to build greater protections for the vulnerable.
ACCORD is an invaluable part of the support structure for developing healthy family relationships. The combination of professional expertise with a considerable voluntary effort has proved to be a very effective tool in helping people to initiate, sustain and enrich their marriages and family relationships. Through your efforts they take on relationships better prepared, they live complex relationships, knowing that help is at hand and that change is possible. Your work turns people with problems into problem solvers and every one you help to become confident family makers and family members, builds up the strength of the individual, the family, the community and our society. We owe you a lot for these decades of volunteer endeavour so freely and generously given and this is an important chance to say thank you on behalf of all the men, women and children who have benefited from your company on their life’s journey.
You know, better than any, that there is no magic wand that can obliterate the hurt and hassle so many people experience in the home day in and day out. But you also know that giving up is not an option. Children are entitled to grow up in loving, caring environments because they need to grow up in such environments if they are to thrive physically and emotionally and if they are to realise their fullest life potential. The womb, from which the little infant first emerges into the light of family life, is nature’s customised environment for the safe development of the growing baby. The family is nature’s customised environment for the safe development of the child, teenager and adult. Being part of a family imposes huge responsibilities on each of us – responsibilities of care for one another and, in particular, huge responsibility for those who are dependent on us. We can quite literally make or break one another. The responsible exercise of that formidable power over one another and over the destiny of each other is what ACCORD is about. Yes there are many challenges facing marriage and family life today. But the benefits and rewards of successful family life are so remarkable and life-enhancing, that it is important to tell them and to sell them. ACCORD’s work does precisely that; emphasising the role of good communication and conflict resolution skills in personal fulfilment as individuals and as a couple; revealing the joy that investing in deepening a relationship can bring to a marriage; advocating the skills needed for responsible parenthood.
In a world characterised by heady individualism and frenetically busy lives and where more and more children lead bifurcated lives with parents who live apart, your work is all the more important for, in the face of these profound changes, we have to be reassured that family life is as good as we can make it and as good as it needs to be for the safe delivery of children into adulthood and the happiness of their parents. The state support, which ACCORD receives, testifies to the crucial role you play in support of marriage and family life and in preventing the breakdown of family relationships.
In a very real way your work is honouring the great commandment to love one another by helping people to put the discipline of love to work fully and effectively in their lives.
I hope that ACCORD’s work will be greatly enhanced by these new premises and that the work will be rewarded by widespread insight into the crucial role played by family life and widespread assumption of personal responsibility for making Irish family life the very best it can be.
Mo mhíle buíochas libh arís as ucht an chuireadh a thabhairt dom teacht anseo inniu agus guím Rath Dé oraibh go léir sna blianta atá romhaibh.
Go raibh maith agaibh.