REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION GALA DINNER
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION GALA DINNER ON THE OCCASION OF ITS PLENARY MEETING R.D.S. DUBLIN
Dia dhíbh a chairde, it’s a pleasure to be here and I’d like to thank Professor Richard Conroy for his kind invitation to join you this evening. I am delighted that Ireland is hosting such an important gathering of eminent and distinguished leaders, including of course, your founding member David Rockefeller. I would also like to acknowledge the great work of Peter Sutherland as he steps down from his leadership role within the Commission to wish Mario Monti well as he takes up the baton.
You are all very welcome – especially those of you who are visiting Ireland for the first time and who have braved the caprice of volcanic ash to be here. That commitment and determination are admirable and reassuring, for right now we surely do need civic leaders who have the tenacity to keep driving forward even in the teeth of formidable problems.
The extent to which those problems were unforeseen and devastating in their consequences has sent most of us back to the classroom to unlearn old certainties, to analyse and try to comprehend new realities and to reimagine the future. The caprice of Mother Nature may be evident in the hot ash spewing from an Icelandic volcano but it is the irresponsibility of human nature that has so many people spitting indignation. They are righteously angry at both the causes and effects of the contemporary economic messes that are impacting locally and globally. In short order there has been a virtual collapse of trust in institutions which once appeared to be solid centres of gravity.
We know that the current levels of international indebtedness means that there are some levers we no longer pull on our own. But at the same time we are still fully in control of the levers of idealism, principle, communal solidarity, and national effort which are essential as we navigate our way to calmer waters. It is said that the only safe ship in a storm is leadership. That leadership is needed not solely from governments or international organisations like the G20 or EU but from every sphere of civic society and you represent a number of very influential civic spheres. You also represent a culture of voluntary public service, of pooling your diverse talents and experience, distilling it through dialogue into a wisdom shared for the greater good of humanity. That is a very powerful and necessary witness in this moment when so many people are stuck in anger mode or paralysed by fear about the future. We need people who can generate a momentum that is far beyond superficial optimism but is a hope rooted in responsible analysis and responsible action.
In Ireland, we are undoubtedly disappointed at the leaching away of a prosperity so recently obtained but it is essential to remember that this is still, when all is said and done, the most successful generation ever to inhabit this island. It has strengths of character, proven achievement and resources which speak of a people capable of turning around this humbling chapter. And we will turn it around. Ours is the first generation in centuries to have built a stable and fair peace. The historically fraught relationships between Ireland and Britain, between Ireland North and South, between Unionist and Nationalist, Catholic and Protestant have been transformed, not by some accident or coincidence but by sheer unrelenting effort. A long-standing culture of militarism and paramilitarism has all but disappeared and a new collegiality and good neighbourliness has begun to characterise relations on this island and between these neighbouring islands.
The dividends of that sea-change are evident in a plethora of ways - the strong community support in the North for policing, the working of a power-sharing government made up of bitter political opponents, the normalisation of political, social and commercial relations on the cross-border axis and the consolidation of the North/South institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. Where once there were chasms of contempt, there are now bridges of dialogue and we can say with certainty that we are only in the opening phase of the potential that will arise from a settled peace. Those who worked on the many complex aspects of the peace agenda and I see a number in this audience, among them in particular Chris Patten, can tell of days of utter defeat, of being urged to give up, of odds that so often threatened to overwhelm. They can also tell how worthwhile it was to keep on going, and how possible change becomes, even the profoundest change, once given leadership that is courageous and unselfish.
With the recent full devolution of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Belfast and the appointment of a Minister for Justice in Northern Ireland, we have witnessed another tangible milestone in the Peace Process, one that many pundits thought highly improbable. It is a source of great pride to us that the peace-makers are now the vast majority, that they include people once wedded to violence and that Northern Ireland’s peace process is being studied elsewhere as part of efforts to resolve other seemingly intractable conflicts around the world. And, of course, we are eternally grateful for the ongoing encouragement and support which our evolving peace process received from the international community – in particular from the US and the EU, as well as from Canada and Finland.
The effort expended in making peace, the willingness to compromise and change that it necessitated and generated, give me hope that Ireland can make a significant contribution to the world-wide search for answers to the current economic crisis. Where a privileged few behaved so selfishly and irresponsibly that they jeopardised our very economy, the majority of our people have adapted stoically and responsibly to the painful new reality of austerity which has reduced their opportunities, their spending power and their quality of life. They have done that even while living with considerable hurt at the individuals, institutions, culture and norms that played such a big part in our current predicament.
In an open capitalist market system it is understandable that people are incentivised towards high performance. However, there is a legitimate concern among ordinary people that the system may return to business as usual once the fuss dies down, that lessons will not be learned or culture changed, and that those in charge will prove to be recidivist risk-takers with little regard for the interests of society at large. That simply cannot be permitted to happen.
The challenge now is to embed positive behaviour and ethically sound corporate governance, joined up and long-term thinking, both in law and in practice - making it instinctive, the default programme, and the reflex action. This will take real and very determined leadership. For many ordinary people, the operation of financial markets is an obscure and somewhat fearful mystery. They are mystified at how easy it was to create such wealth absorbing financial products that had no credible roots in actual hard cash. They are mystified at the capacity of so many educated people to do the sums on credit risk and get them so spectacularly wrong.
Our business leaders urgently need to demystify the operation of international financial markets; to make them more accessible, transparent and accountable. Our citizens will need to be persuaded that the sacrifices they are enduring for reasons that were not of their making are being matched by a determination to ensure that market sentiment is founded on sound reason, not fickle caprice, and that money works in the public interest and not in the personal interest of those who move it around. They need to know that regulation is robust enough to protect their interests and that a new culture of ethical care for citizens, their families and their futures is in the hearts of those in whose hands rests responsibility for financing our economies.
We know that leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. Those who are in leadership positions today, as you are, both as individuals in your diverse workplaces and collectively through the voluntary work of this Commission, have a duty of care for the men, women and children who trust you because of your education, your experience, your job title, your role and your responsibilities.
Now it is up to all of us to respond to that call for leadership. That response is called public service, an honest, decent doing of all jobs which impact on the quality of life of the public with a care and a hard-wired sense of personal responsibility for, at the very least, doing no harm. It’s a big ask but our own experiences in the Northern Ireland peace process have shown just what can happen when we harness the idealism, vision, talent and determination of a new generation of leaders or an old generation humbled by failure and tired of its waste of human potential. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.