REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF A CROSS BORDER EDUCATION ACCESS INIATIVE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF A CROSS BORDER EDUCATION ACCESS INITIATIVE
My good friend Professor von Prondzynski, Ladies and Gentlemen
Cuireann sé áthas orm bheith anseo libh arís inniu. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an gcuireadh agus as an bhfáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
Thank you for inviting me to be here today to celebrate with you the 15th anniversary of the widening access programme at Dublin City University and the launch of a radical new initiative which extends access scholarships to students from Northern Ireland. I congratulate DCU on being the first university to offer an all island access opportunity and I am particularly glad to be here to warmly welcome the new participants on access programmes to DCU. This place represents your opportunity and I wish each of you that unique mixture of academic success, friendship, fulfilment and fun that is the hallmark of university life.
In what seems now another Ireland, another world, but was in fact Northern Ireland a couple of generations ago, the mood among the most excluded section of the community was brilliantly described by Seamus Heaney in his poem, “From the Canton of Expectation” which describes the effects on his community of free education. The opening lines say:
“We lived deep in a land of optative moods / Under highbanked clouds of resignation”.
You can almost feel the pent up desires and emotions pushing, frustrated, against the paralysing effect of generations of underachievement. Then comes the convulsive change brought about by one very simple thing - the widening of access to education and suddenly the schools and the universities were full of what he describes as “intelligences, brightened and unmannerly as crowbars”. That generation changed the nature of Northern society, changed the political discourse, changed the future, scattered the clouds of resignation and replaced them with a purposive egalitarianism which would no longer accept being second–class.
The same story was repeated somewhat later south of the border with the advent of free secondary education and the phenomenal growth of the third level sector. Three decades later we watched as the clouds of endemic emigration, high unemployment, global isolation, ceann faoi, gave way to a new, confident, economically successful growing population, comfortably European, a can do culture. Now we harvest the genius of our people as never before, now talent that was once wasted gets a chance to blossom, now the voices that used to say - you cannot because you are a woman, you cannot because you are poor, you cannot because you are disabled, you cannot because you are a traveller - these voices are silent. We have seen the tide rise and we have watched the boats rise with it but now we also know that all boats do not in fact lift on a rising tide.
History and circumstance dictate that some are beached so far up the strand that an extra helping hand is needed. That is the role that access programmes play, bridging that gap, making sure that there are no insurmountable obstacles in the way of the ambitions of the young men and women who are our natural talent base and our hope for the future.
We are the proof that education empowers individuals and through them families, communities and countries. It is the key to poverty alleviation and to sustainable human development and in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, exclusion from education translates into worsening disadvantage. In today’s Ireland we need people who are problem solvers not problems, people who have confidence in their abilities and faith in their country’s commitment to fully respecting those abilities. DCU is a longstanding champion of widening access to third level. I remember that first Access Service initiative with Ballymun back in 1990 which of course has long since expanded to the border-midland region and in fact only eighteen months ago in April 2003, I had the pleasure of opening a conference on Access to third level education by socio-economically disadvantaged students in the Helix Arts Centre here in DCU.
Now you are celebrating the 15th birthday of the Access Service at a time when North South relations are characterised by a much greater level of both peace and partnership so it is just the right moment for such an all island initiative. This is what the peace dividend can offer, hope, opportunity and shared prosperity. I wish every success to this partnership between four schools in Northern Ireland and DCU involving as it does the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the Southern and Western Education and Library Boards. It is another bold step towards your goal of becoming "the leading academic champion in the Republic for North-South co-operation"
It is particularly good to see so many of those who have kept faith with the DCU Access Programme from its inception. You know better than anyone of the lives changed and the struggles that led to success stories. Each of those stories gives us the encouragement to believe in an Ireland which has an ambition to achieve that “ true social order” our Constitution speaks of, where the equality and dignity of each human person is a lived reality rather than an unrealised longing.
Always and ever of course, access to education is dependent on access to resources and it is very heartening to see your initiatives and the initiatives of other third level institutions so well supported by public funds through the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the European Social Fund (ESF) and private funds through the generosity of companies and individuals. There is a huge vindication in all this and it is to be found in the lives, the futures, of the students who are its beneficiaries. When they leave DCU they become the primary ambassadors for access initiatives - their success, their contribution to Irish society reminds us of what we could have lost without the kind of faith and commitment today signifies.
So happy birthday to DCU’s Access programme for disadvantaged students and every success to its latest extension to Northern Ireland. Congratulations to everyone who has contributed to these past fifteen years. May the work of the next fifteen flourish and may it be even more fulfilling than these past fifteen which we celebrate with righteous pride today.
Is iontach an obair ata ar siúl agaibh anseo. Go raibh maith agaibh.