REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT UNION OF STUDENTS IN IRELAND 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT UNION OF STUDENTS IN IRELAND 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION STILLORGAN PARK HOTEL, DUBLIN
Dia dhaoibh go léir. Is ocáid an speisialta í seo agus tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo anocht agus í a cheiliúradh libh. I’m delighted to be here this evening to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Union of Students in Ireland. It is reassuring that even Students’ Unions can grow middle-aged but remain eternally young. The Students Union is the first Union I ever joined though I hasten to add I was not a founder member of this Union! Those early pioneers of student organisation and advocacy belonged to a world in which third level education in Ireland was bang on the cusp of massive change. Until then third level education was the prerogative of the wealthy or those who had opted for the priesthood or ministry. The advent of free second level education in Northern Ireland at the end of the 1940s and in the Republic twenty years later changed all that, broadening the ambition for and access to third level, bringing in to Ireland’s colleges what Seamus Heaney has memorably described as “intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.” Nothing describes that cusp period more brilliantly than Heaney in his poem “From the Canton of Expectation”
And next thing, suddenly, this change of mood.
Books open in the newly wired kitchens.
Young heads that might have dozed a life away
Against the flanks of milking cows were busy
Paving and pencilling their first causeways
Across the prescribed texts. The paving stones of quadrangles came next and a grammar
Of imperatives, the new age of demands.
From those paving stones of college quadrangles, came the fresh voices of students determined to organise themselves effectively into an all-island student movement which would leave its imprint not only on the lives of its members but on the wider society. Though very few trade unions experience the constant change of membership and leadership that is inevitably experienced by the Union of Students, that constant ebb and flow has never prevented the Union from growing, developing and consolidating its position at the head of student politics. There have been the inevitable squabbles and splits over these five decades but the simple factual testimony of today says it all, this Union represents a quarter of a million students from all across this island.
On a day of celebration such as this is, the focus inevitably and rightly takes us back to the chain of leadership which brought the union through those fifty years to its position of maturity and strength today. Many of those who held and then passed on the baton of leadership are household names today for their passion for politics or fair play was no passing phenomenon of youth but a lifetime vocation.
Names come to mind like that of our Chief Justice John Murray, or Joe Duffy, Mark Durkan, Eamonn Gilmore and many more. For many students, membership of this Union and participation in its work at local college or national level was their first introduction to active adult citizenship, to seeing themselves as active contributors to the contemporary education debates and the discussions about wider social and political issues both at home and abroad. This Union helped them forge the confidence to believe in themselves as agents and arbiters of change.
We had a reminder of the positive power of student movements internationally earlier this week with the re-creation in Prague of the student march that twenty years ago lead to the Velvet Revolution and an end to totalitarianism in that country. The establishment in 1972 of the National Union of Students – Union of Students in Ireland (NUS-USI) demonstrated the Union’s impressive foresight and inclusiveness, long before the phrase “all-island” became fashionable. Under this unique initiative, the student movement in Northern Ireland was jointly organised by both the British and Irish national student unions to promote student unity across the sectarian divide and to ensure that old divisions did not result in a dilution of student advocacy and student power.
Over these past fifty years a hugely diverse graduate population has been crucial to unlocking Ireland’s considerable potential on so many fronts. That harnessed intellectual muscle has quite simply changed the face and fortunes of Ireland, releasing an extraordinary surge of confidence and energy in every sphere of life. Even in these economic doldrums it continues to be a crucial source of hope for our future and in particular our ambition to be a smart economy that is innovative, forward-looking, competitive, entrepreneurial and above all fair to all its citizens for we as a society have much more than one ambition. We have known the euphoria of rapid successes and the harsh chastening of even more rapid failures. These things change our perspective as we face the same future that this Union faces and ask ourselves what seeds we will plant now, for they will determine what we harvest at your next big birthday in twenty-five or fifty years time. During those years you will be what you have earned the right to be, a key player in decision making within the third level sector and at government level, an important contributor to debate about our values and our ambitions in the years ahead.
Yours is a formidable and a respected voice thanks to the work done, the successes notched up over these past fifty years. They are the platform from which you launch into the next fifty years. None of us here can predict with any certainty what kind of Ireland those who celebrate USI’s future big birthdays will find themselves in. We do know however that without advocates who believe in fairness and equality, without champions who see things to be done and who organise and do them, the ambition we have to live in a place which cherishes all its children equally will remain just that, an ambition. To make it real we need the help of those whose constituency is the best and brightest of each coming generation. They will be the hands, heads and hearts of tomorrow’s Ireland. So lead them well.
Thank you for fifty years of leadership, enjoy the birthday and face the future with the same passion, curiosity and commitment that brought this Union into being fifty years ago and brought it stronger than ever to this day of celebration.
Comhghairdeas libh arís 's go n-éirí go geal libh.