REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE UNVEILING OF A MONUMENT FOR IRELAND’S MISSING PEOPLE KILKENNY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE UNVEILING OF A MONUMENT FOR IRELAND’S MISSING PEOPLE KILKENNY SUNDAY, 26TH MAY, 2002
Thank you for inviting me to share this day with you – a day when we meet to remember loved ones who are missing and whose absence brings the most devastating, enduring sense of loss, an open wound that knows no healing. The compassion and pity felt by those of us who watch the suffering you the relatives endure is not enough to ease the pain you carry with you but we hope that it helps you a little on your life’s journey, a journey along a road not of your making or choosing, a journey none of us would ever wish to go.
The unveiling of this striking new sculpture by Ann Mulrooney incorporating as it does casts of hands of the relatives of missing persons reminds us graphically that for each person who disappears there is a family and indeed a whole community grieving without closure or the prospect of closure.
Any parent who ever lost sight of a child for a few minutes will know the dread that takes hold until that child is found safe and sound. Imagine then, and most of us can barely imagine, the despair and anguish when there is no happy ending and worse still no known ending at all.
The families and friends of the missing are left only with inexplicable loss, with riddles, mysteries and many questions.
For every family the experience is different. For some, the circumstances of their loved one’s disappearance may seem to hold out little hope of seeing them again. For others, contact perhaps may have been lost due to an accident or illness, or equally as sad through the personal choice of the missing family member. All families, however, share a common experience, they all care and care deeply about the missing person and they all experience the pain and trauma of trying to cope and come to terms with an absence they hope will end but fear will not.
It takes courage to carry on searching and hoping, day after day, year after year. It takes strength to go on looking for answers and this monument is testimony to the families who have not given up hope and whose enduring love is the energy that keeps them going against all the odds. Many talk of their lives being put on hold. We all hope and pray that here in this quiet place dedicated to the stories of the missing that memories of happier times may be called to mind, that the realisation that others are facing the same nightmare will bring a solidarity and determination to keep on remembering, to never give up hope or the pursuit of truth. This monument speaks of a love without end. Through it may those of us who do not carry the full weight of your grim daily burden be reminded of our responsibility to share it to the best of our abilities.
It is good that a new range of support services are developing around the families of missing persons, for you have many needs. An important one is the need for a single contact point where advice and support can be accessed and thankfully that is soon to come on stream, with the launch of a Helpline later this year by the Irish Association for Victim Support with funding from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It will provide invaluable advice, counselling and referral and structured liaison with the Gardaí and we owe our gratitude to Victim Support for taking this important initiative, which will make quite a difference to families facing into this awful experience.
Those who have lived through that experience have taken the rest of us on a journey of growing awareness. This sculpture is part of that public education, a vital warning, a fitting reminder. I am sure you will all join with me in congratulating Ann Mulrooney, who has created a worthy addition to the artistic legacy of Kilkenny. I would like to acknowledge years of campaigning and hard work undertaken by the Jo Jo Dollard Memorial Trust, and in particular Mary Phelan, whose tireless work has seen the project through from the start. I hope today brings you deep satisfaction and that the future will hold the answers to set your troubled hearts to rest at last. Maybe this monument will be the very thing to prompt some of those answers. I certainly hope so.
Thank you.