REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE RECEPTION HOSTED BY AMBASSADOR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE RECEPTION HOSTED BY AMBASSADOR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC MR TOMÁŠ KAFKA
Your Excellency President Klaus, Mrs. Klausová,
Ambassador Kafka and distinguished guests
Good evenig, Dobry večer
I am delighted to be your guest here this evening. This gathering is a living embodiment of Irish-Czech relations. It is wonderful to see so many representatives of Ireland’s large and thriving Czech community. President Klaus, when you last visited Dublin in 1996 in your role as Prime Minister, this community of compatriots would have been considerably smaller for we were not then as we are now, partners in the European Union and so sharers in each others present and future.
An earlier generation of Czech emigrants to Ireland came here during very difficult times for their homeland. They came to a poor Ireland and they invested their lives in helping build up our civic and economic life. They made a very important contribution, far in excess of their size as a group. Those who arrived in more recent years came to a prospering Ireland and they too have helped to grow this new Ireland where the quality of life has improved greatly for so many people. Now, together, we face more uncertain economic times. It is a test of us as individuals and as community. Our resilience will be tested, our adaptability, our willingness to face the new financial realities. What will help us through these tougher days though will be our sense of community, our kindness and courtesy to one another, our compassion and care – shown to all who live here, to newcomer and native alike. The Czech and Irish have long experience of emigration, of being strangers in new lands. We both have sizeable families scattered all over the world. Many of them faced times and troubles infinitely more difficult that those we face into.
Today our people, casually and cheaply, freely travel between Prague and Dublin in their tens of thousands. They are getting to know one another as friends, neighbours, colleagues, partners. They are between them revealing the potential of the European Union, the potential of partnership. They are doing what our Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney exhorted on the Day of Welcomes, May 1st 2004, when he exhorted us to “move lips, move minds, make new meanings flare”.
We wish you every success Mr President as your country prepares to take on the Presidency of the Union for the first time in January and we congratulate you in this, the ninetieth anniversary year of the birth of an independent Czechoslovakia. It is very evident that the best is yet to come.
I hope that you enjoy the rest of your visit to Ireland, including your trip to Cork tomorrow. Having been so warmly welcomed to your beautiful country back in 1999, I hope that, whatever the Irish weather does, you will meet a warm and welcoming people and an abiding sense of friendship between the Irish and Czech peoples. My thanks to Ambassador Kafka for a beautiful reception and to all those who have come to celebrate this important State Visit.