REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE REFURBISHED LISMORE HOUSE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE REFURBISHED LISMORE HOUSE AND THE LAUNCH OF THE LISMORE IMMRAMA FESTIVAL
Dia dhíbh ar maidin a cháirde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith libh inniu.
Lismore is celebrating today and it is good to be part of its double celebration - the opening of the refurbished Lismore House and the launch of the 2004 Lismore Immrama Featival of Travel Writing. The first opens up the past to us and the second opens up the world to us and it is particularly appropriate that Lismore should twin these two things for it was to this place, then a famous University town that the scholars of Europe travelled over a thousand years ago. Something about Lismore attracted St. Carthage to establish a monastery here in 636 AD. It is not hard to work out the reasons why - for its spectacular setting on the Blackwater is a place where it is easy to see the beauty of God’s creation. It was that monastery which grew into the famous European University, a renowned centre of scholarship for centuries and set the scene for Lismore’s status as a formidable centre of civil power right through until the seventeenth century.
Today Lismore’s Heritage Centre, which I am very pleased to re-open after its extensive refurbishment is top of the list of attractions for the visitor to explore and it is true to its educational heritage with thousands of children enjoying the challenging learning environment provided here. Every child who ever studied school chemistry should make a pilgrimage to the hometown of Robert Boyle for we all remember the name of Boyle’s law even if we cannot now remember what that law actually was! But his is an iconic name in the world of science and evidence of Ireland’s huge contribution to scientific innovation throughout the centuries. More contemporary innovations remind us that Lismore could claim a special place in the hearts of Ireland’s beleaguered smokers because of its historic connection with Sir Walter Raleigh the man we have to thank for introducing tobacco and without whom we would not now have the ban on smoking in the workplace and Miler McGrath must surely rank as the most ecumenical person in Irish history since he was simultaneously the Protestant Archbishop of Cashel and Lismore, and the Catholic Bishop of Down and Conor. Lismore’s colourful and dramatic past meets its exciting present today with the launch of the programme for the 2004 Lismore Immrama, Festival of Travel Writing. Inspired by Ireland and Lismore’s internationally renowned travel writer, Dervla Murphy, this young festival is destined to become an established annual series of world-class arts and cultural festivals for the Lismore area, attracting travel writers and enthusiasts from all over the world.
Immrama is a beautiful old celtic word for rowing or paddling about and I am delighted to find a word that embraces both, since my children are serious rowers who chide their less than serious rowing parents and accuse us of merely “paddling about”. This year’s festival theme is ‘Irish Travel and Emigration’. In that simple innocuous title we are swept back to 7th century Lismore and the days when Christian missionaries set out from here on foot to take the Gospel across continental Europe and to be a strong light in those days of the Dark Ages. That journey takes us through the centuries of poverty-driven emigration, right up to the present day when Ireland has metamorphosed into a prosperous country of net inward migration, hundreds of thousands of whose citizens routinely set out for holiday destinations in every corner of the globe no doubt attracted by the scene set by the very travel writers Lismore hopes to attract.
I hope that all who visit the festival will find here the spark of inspiration that held St. Carthage here, the challenging intellectual environment that brought Europe’s scholars and nurtured Robert Boyle’s passion for science and the friendships that bring people back time and time again. The Immrama Festival organisers are to be warmly congratulated for the huge effort invested in this important celebration of the work and the place of the travel writer, with its exhibitions, music, films, readings from travel literature and documentaries. I am sure their love of Lismore and their hard work will be well rewarded with a very successful Festival.
I know that this visitor to Lismore is thrilled to be here and I can vouch for the warm Lismore welcome for which I want to thank each of you and especially the Mayor of Lismore, Mark Khan; the board of Lismore Heritage Company and its dedicated Chairman Donal Connolly; Waterford County Council and Lismore Town Council; Mary Houlihan and her staff here at the Heritage Centre; the organising Festival Committee and of course their distinguished patron and daugher of Lismore, Dervla Murphy.
I have much pleasure in launching the programme of the 2nd Immrama Festival of Travel Writing, and in officially declaring the refurbished Heritage Centre open.
Go maire sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.