REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER HOSTED IN HONOUR OF HIS MAJESTY ALBERT II
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER HOSTED IN HONOUR OF HIS MAJESTY ALBERT II, KING OF THE BELGIANS
Your Majesties,
Distinguished guests,
It is my very great pleasure on the occasion of your State visit to extend a heartfelt “Céad Mile Fáilte”, one hundred thousand welcomes, to Ireland.
I hope your Majesties will experience Ireland as a warm and friendly place in the same way that I and many Irish have experienced Belgium. Our two countries are old friends with centuries-old connections and yet it is important that in every generation we take the time and make the effort to befriend each other anew.
Your Majesties travel in the footsteps of the late King Baudouin, whose visit in 1968 created one of those iconic images many people remember when he tried his hand at our native game of hurling and was seen to handle the ball better than our then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, one of the legendary giants of hurling prowess. That episode took place outside the windows where we are now sitting and by some miracle they survived and so we are sitting beside the same glass.
King Baudouin’s visit came shortly before the onset of the violence that engulfed Northern Ireland and made a nightmare of the next four decades. Your visit comes as peace takes hold and a new era of partnership starts to reveal its potential.
A fresh new relationship, founded on mutual respect, is developing between the two great traditions of Ireland. Now more and more we are meeting as good neighbours and rediscovering the true extent of our shared history. In fact my first visit to Belgium as President was intimately linked with commemorating the shared history of both major traditions in Ireland.
In 1998, your Majesty will recall, we had the honour, together with Queen Elizabeth II, of inaugurating the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines, where homage is paid to all Irish people who gave their lives for the freedom of Europe during the Great War. Your Majesties will have the chance to visit the War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge, which honours those same 50,000 Irish who died in the first world war. Their stories, their young lost lives, link Ireland and Belgium in a special way and they challenge us do our utmost to secure a future for all of Europe, anchored in peace, justice and democracy.
Today we do that as partners in the European Union and the United Nations, two small nations with big hearts and big voices raised in the global advocacy of our common values, human rights, human decency, human dignity based on freedom and democracy; two small but successful nations determined to realise their fullest potential. The presence in your party of academic and business delegations is testament to the multifaceted nature and vitality of our contemporary bilateral relationship. But in truth we claim a much more ancient kinship that dates from a millennium and a half ago when an Irish Saint, named Faolán or Feuillen founded a monastery at Fosses and started a link between Ireland and Belgium that would help change the very course of Ireland’s history. The City of Leuven boasts a thriving Irish Centre directly related to the Irish Franciscan College founded there four hundred years ago and which was for generations a crucial part of Ireland in exile. When our leaders were no longer safe on Irish soil it was to Leuven they went for sanctuary and from there published the first ever texts in the Irish language, the first history of our country and gave to our language for the first time, the word “nation”.
Today we are indebted to a Belgian mathematician, Victor D’Hondt, for the formula now used to allocate ministerial positions in the Northern Ireland Executive, clear evidence of the ongoing role played by Belgium in Irish history. And of course some Irish are playing their part in shaping Belgian history. Since joining the EU, many hundreds of Irish men and women have happily and successfully made their lives in Brussels working mainly in the European Institutions. We Irish and Belgians now share a new generation of Belgian-Irish children, the outward sign and great hope of our very best shared future. We and they have much to look forward to.
I thank your Majesties for visiting us and for renewing these formidable ties of friendship, kinship and history. We celebrate your visit in a spirit of optimism and confidence about the future development of our political, economic and cultural relations.
I now invite you, distinguished guests, to stand and join me in a toast:
To the health and happiness of his Majesty King Albert II, King of the Belgians, and Queen Paola;
To peace and prosperity for the Kingdom of Belgium; and
To continued friendship between the peoples of Ireland and Belgium.
Gura fada buan sibh.