Remarks by President McAleese at the opening of the Universitas 21 Symposium O’Reilly Hall, UCD
Remarks by President McAleese at the opening of the Universitas 21 Symposium O’Reilly Hall, UCD Thursday, 8 May 2008
Good morning. Thank you for your very warm welcome, and in particular, thank you to Dr Lithander and to UCD’s President, Hugh Brady, for inviting me to open today’s symposium.
I extend a warm welcome to each of you to Ireland and to UCD, and a very special céad míle fáilte - one hundred thousand welcomes - to the many of you who are visiting Ireland from abroad. It is wonderful to see so many fine universities represented here from around the world. You pay us a great compliment by your presence here this week and I hope that you will find the symposium, the AGM and our city stimulating, welcoming and enjoyable.
UCD is rightly tremendously proud of its membership of the prestigious Universitas 21 Network and of this opportunity to play host to each of you as you collectively shift gear in terms of focus on the Developing World. Just what kind of outcomes can we expect from the kind of strategic partnerships with the Developing World that you will be contemplating? What is the likeliest road map for this new direction? How can your expertise in research and education best assist in enhancing the problem solving skills of the world’s poorest and least achieving nations?
If ever there was a right place to contemplate and discuss these questions then Ireland is it. We are a first-world country with a very recent third-world memory. It is not so long ago that Ireland was a grim and depressing story of widespread poverty with high levels of unemployment and outward migration. Subsistence farming was the norm, industrial output was strongly linked to low-added-value agricultural products and access to second-level education was patchy while third-level was for a well-to-do elite.
Yeats presciently predicted that Ireland’s future prosperity would depend as much on “the richness of its intellect” as on “the richness of its soil”. Both require considerable preparation, cultivation and harvesting. In the 1960s the harvesting of the greatest natural resource we have, the brain power of our people, began in earnest with the introduction of free second-level education and institutes of technology, a new emphasis on science and technology and the rapid expansion of the university sector. From the 1970s, membership of the European Union brought considerable, new confidence and much-needed resources with which to build up a seriously depleted infrastructure. The harvest of modernisation, industrialisation and globalisation began to come in. Unemployment dropped dramatically, outward migration which had lasted for one hundred and fifty years gave way to considerable inward migration. Ireland had metamorphosed into a land of opportunity and there can be no doubt that education was a key element in the process of change. In fact it was a sine qua non.
Over most of the last two centuries Ireland has had an extensive outreach to the world’s poor, initiated and led by Christian missionaries and charities, but substantially financially backed by the Irish people and our government. Today we are deeply implicated in the work that is driving towards achievement of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Leaving aside the private, charitable contributions of our people which are among the highest per capita in the world, our Government last year spent 813 million euro on development aid and by 2012 that figure will amount to €1.5 billion when we reach, as we intend to, 0.7% of our GNP. Our Government’s recent White Paper on Irish Aid highlights the potential of the developing countries’ higher education and research sectors to contribute to solving the many problems which are holding back progress. Our government agency, Irish Aid, the Higher Education Authority and our universities are already actively cooperating with a number of African universities to develop their research capacity. Only a few weeks ago I met Professor Paul Walsh and his colleagues in the Centre for International Development Studies at the launch of the Irish and African Universities Initiative and they are of course working with the University of Dar es Salaam on this very issue. These strategic partnerships offer not just enhanced research opportunities but improved quality of research output, increased capacity to influence government and to influence education, health and economic policies. They build confidence and courage, two important sources of energy especially for those working in tough conditions with very sparse resources.
There is an Irish proverb which says that two shortens the journey. The journey to progress and prosperity for the world’s poor can surely be shortened by having your company.
The institutions you represent, individually and collectively, constitute a massive intellectual and experiential resource. The leverage you have is considerable and positions you well to assume a leadership role as the principal instigators and coordinators of a new type of international development partnership, bringing together key stakeholders such as government agencies, funding bodies, corporate partners, charities and faith-based organisations. The 14 countries represented in the Universitas 21 Network together account for some 58 per cent of the world’s international overseas development assistance. Your initiative will help to ensure that these funds are spent wisely, sustainably and coherently.
The combined power of government and the academy holds potential on a grand scale. The strategic partnerships you have in view have available some serious heavy lifting equipment; just the kind of equipment needed for the serious problems faced by developing nations. Serious but not insurmountable. There was a time when it seemed that prosperity was unlikely in Ireland and peace, impossible. Neither happened by accident but by design; by ideas thrashed out at conferences and symposia; by applied brain power and by determined and passionate people who just plain refused to accept that poverty and conflict cannot be transcended with a will and an intelligent way. I wish you every success in what is a noble endeavour and I will be watching the outcome of this symposium with great interest.
Finally, as this symposium coincides with the Annual General Meeting of the Universitas 21 Network, allow me to wish all of the participants, and in particular John Casteen, the Chairman, and Jane Usherwood, the Secretary General, every success at tomorrow’s meeting.