REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ON THE PRESENTATION OF NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION OF NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS
A Oirircis, A Dhéin an Chóir Thaidhleoireachta, A Oirirceasa, a Aire de Paor is a Uaisle Uile, agus a Dhaoine Óga, cuireann sé áthas orm agus ar m’fhear céile, Mairtín, fáilte ó chroí a chur romhaibh go léir go hÁras an Uachtaráin.
Your Excellency, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Excellencies, Minister Power, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, I am delighted to extend to you and your families the traditional welcome of the House, céad míle fáilte, 100,000 welcomes, and thank you all for your kind greetings to Martin and myself and, through us, to the people of Ireland. I wish for each one of you and your homelands that this coming year will bring much good fortune and a marked reduction in those unpalatable things which conspire to make life difficult for so many people.
I know and you know but probably not enough people know just how important your work is in keeping our edgy world on as even a keel as possible. Without your vocation as diplomats, the world would be a very much more volatile place. On this occasion it is important that I reassure you of our gratitude to you, your spouses, partners, children and wider families for the seen, unseen and unsung sacrifices you make in order to sustain the network of international diplomacy. You help to keep open important lines of communication between nations, you help to quell emerging storms, you promote better mutual understanding so that cultural differences and perspectives do not become impenetrable barriers to peace and reconciliation.
The past year since we last gathered here was particularly eventful for Ireland. The successful stabilisation of the economy was a clear priority painful though that was and will continue to be but it was faced into with realism and determination despite the understandable anger and disappointment at rising unemployment and dropping income levels. The overwhelming ratification of the Lisbon Treaty confirmed not only Ireland’s fidelity to the European project but that project’s fidelity to the accommodation of difference and patient search for consensus around the Union table. Now the Treaty has entered into force and the European Union has a stable and lasting institutional framework, allowing it to fully focus its energy on the many local and global challenges ahead.
We in Ireland had our share of local challenges. Many of you will have seen the strong, caring and generous character of the Irish people showcased in their response to this winter’s recordbreaking floods and freezes. You will also have seen the solid determination of our people to right past wrongs in the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports into child abuse, a topic I will return to in a moment. That same determination and care for our people were evident in the efforts made to secure the successful release from kidnappers of Aid workers Sharon Commins and Hilda Kawuki in Sudan and Columban missionary Fr Michael Sinnott in the Philippines. Could I also take this oppportunity to reiterate our thanks to the Sudanese and Philippines’ authorities for their important help in those cases. Our friends from France, Italy, England, Scotland and Wales will also have direct experience of our determination on the rugby field which culminated in a thrilling day in Cardiff when a legendary Irish team won the Grand Slam and lifted the nation’s drooping spirits.
However our relations with our near neighbours were more generally characterised by partnership around the slow but sure growth of confidence in the peace process in Northern Ireland. We exercise a shared custodianship of that precious peace in which so much has already been invested and which has such stunning potential. The appallingly wicked and cruel murders by so-called Republican dissidents of two young British soldiers, Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey, and a serving PSNI officer, Stephen Carroll were designed to shake the resolve of the peace-makers. They failed abjectly in that regard, provoking instead a formidable cross-community solidarity which has remained strong and intact even in the face of the latest atrocity, the recent brutal attack on PSNI Constable Peadar Heffron. Peadar, his family and colleagues are strongly in our prayers today as are all those who have sacrificed their lives and health to build a fresh new culture of fairness, justice, equality and good neighbourliness. I hope that many young men and women will take heroic leaders like Peadar as their inspiration and join the active peace-makers. The recent announcement by the Ulster Defence Association that it has decommissioned its weapons is another welcome signal that the old embedded culture of violence and paramilitarism is grinding to a halt and that people want the opportunity to create normal, prosperous, hope-filled lives, particularly in marginalised communities which have borne the brunt of the Troubles. The Irish and British governments are working relentlessly with the Northern Ireland Executive and the North’s political parties to create that new culture of opportunity and we wish all concerned well in the current talks which we hope will soon lead to the completion of devolution and the dawning of a new era in politics and community life in Northern Ireland.
Irish politics are but a small fraction of global politics but they are also a human microcosm with some telling lessons worth sharing. Not least among those lessons is the power of compromise, partnership and patience in peacemaking. Another lesson is the utter vulnerability of children in the absence of stringent vigilance and accountability of those charged with their care. Irish State authorities and Catholic Church authorities were found seriously wanting and innocent children were hurt as a consequence. Thanks to victims and their advocates, we have been able to offer redress and reassurance that child protection is a high priority, infinitely more important than the status of any institution or individual, and that child abuse is as it has always been a heinous crime - but today it is a crime that will be pursued not suppressed. These matters rightly absorb us in Ireland but the problems addressed by the Ryan and Murphy reports, as well as the vulnerability of children to abuse in the home, are peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Catholic Church. These are global problems and to assume otherwise is to offer abusers the same dishonourable secret veil which gave them protection and immunity for far too long. I hope the world’s children will benefit from the greater scepticism and vigilance that our experience rightly demands in order to better protect our children.
The world’s children rely on us in so many ways to make straight the paths they will travel. That is why Ireland has such an abiding commitment to human rights, to conflict prevention, crisis management, conflict resolution to the ideals enshrined in our Constitution and international conventions and in particular to the United Nations. We are a small militarily neutral country and yet we have played a vigorous and important role in global peace-keeping operations for over fifty years. That work continues today in Chad, Liberia, Lebanon, Kosovo, Congo and EUFOR as part of a proud tradition of international cooperation in the interest of peace that Ireland is actively passionate about.
However, there are many serious troubles which beset the world and which call for concerted action from all citizens and governments if they are to be successfully faced down. Among them climate change and the unchecked growth of carbon emissions loom like a dark and brooding shadow over the earth’s future sustainability. The international community has a sacred duty to take on this challenge yet the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was frankly a little disappointing and leaves much work to be done at the next conference in Mexico where it is hoped that we whose actions and inactions can change the world for good or ill will work with humble zeal to reach the kind of comprehensive agreement which can deliver change for the good of all.
While we grumble about our own miseries and acknowledge that many of our people have suffered considerable hardship as a result of economic recession and the caprice of the weather, nonetheless the Irish know with a deep empathy that comes from generations of outreach to the developing world that vast swathes of the world’s citizens live lives that are blighted by deep-rooted poverty, pervasive hunger and lack of education on a scale not seen in Ireland for generations.
Today our hearts, thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti as they struggle to come to terms with the devastating earthquake that struck there a few days ago. We can only imagine the grief that has beset that nation as it continues the rescue efforts to save lives, treat the injured and sadly, bury the dead. We in Ireland have a strong record of responding quickly and effectively to humanitarian disasters such as this one. We all still remember the tsunami that struck Asia just a few years ago and brought such an outpouring of sympathy and assistance from the Irish people. We will not be remiss on this occasion either and the Government has already pledged two million Euro, as well as providing emergency humanitarian stocks and experts from the Rapid Response Corps. I understand that a Government humanitarian team will travel to Haiti to assess immediate priorities as well as medium to longer term needs. I know the Irish people will also demonstrate their generosity through private donations to our Non Governmental Organisations which are working in the country.
In relation to longer term development cooperation, our overseas aid programme, Irish Aid aims to make a real difference especially to the lives of the world’s poorest children, over 9 million children of whom die annually in developing countries, mainly from preventable diseases. So we focus our efforts on the needs of children, and the things that stand in the way of their full potential, the diseases like malaria, TB, HIV and AIDS, access to regular and nutritious food, and access to quality education. Our own transition to relative prosperity as a country is still fresh enough in our collective consciousness to convince us that education is a crucial part of the escape route from poverty and the child who is healthy and not hungry is more likely to benefit fully from the education that is available.
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen in a tough world, friends are a blessing and a comfort as well as a resource. We are grateful for your friendship and the friendship of your homelands. You are the visible sign that we are indeed a global family made up of many characters and identities but a family that though often disappointingly and frustratingly dysfunctional has the opportunity and the potential to be community and good neighbours to one another.
May your work over the coming year bring you fulfilment and through it may it bring our world into closer friendship, closer realisation of the noble principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Gúim rath and sonas oraibh go leir.
I wish all prosperity and happiness.