REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS, WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY, 2002
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS, WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY, 2002
A Oirircis, A Oirirceasa is a Uaisle Uile,
Cuireann sé an‑áthas orm agus ar mo fhear céile, Martin, fáilte ó chroi a chur romhaibh go léir go hÁras an Uachtaráin. Tá mé an‑bhuíoch as na beannachtaí a chuir sibh orainn agus ar mhuintir na hÉireann uilig. Tá súil agam go mbeidh athbhliain faoi mhaise agaibh agus gúim sonas, sláinte agus buansíochaín oraibh go léir.
Your Excellency, Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen, Girls and Boys,
I want to thank each member of the Diplomatic Corps for your kind greetings which you have offered to Martin and myself, and through us to the people of Ireland. I am delighted to welcome you and your families to the Áras and wish to extend to you and the citizens of your countries the hope that this year will prove to be a happy and peaceful one.
Unfortunately, last year will always be remembered for the wrong reasons.
I was waiting in this room to receive the Credentials of Ambassador Menon when word reached me of the extraordinary events unfolding in the United States. I found myself on the lawn outside, a short time later conveying the incomprehension, the sadness and shock of the Irish people. Our new American Ambassador and next door neighbour Richard Egan and his wife Maureen had presented credentials just the day before and I admire greatly how well they coped with those shattering events, when they had not even had time to unpack their bags.
11 September, 2001 was indeed a grim day for our world and I am conscious that its consequences imposed and continue to impose huge responsibilities on world leaders and on the cohort of diplomats who maintain that essential web of global communication through which mutual understanding is developed and through which mutual misunderstanding is sorted out. The hatred that burns in the human heart is the single most destructive weapon on this earth. Its power is awesome and its legacy is nothing to be proud of. It casts shadows over this island among many other parts of the globe and there are plenty of lessons to be learnt from all the episodes where hatred has run amok, lessons we ignore at our peril. Ultimately we as a generation of people who are privileged to hold positions which can influence hearts and minds, we will be judged on how well we used our talents and our influence to soften hearts, to challenge blind hatred and to promote the values of reconciliation, of generosity and tolerance. Leadership matters, language matters in the struggle we all need to wage against the toxin of hatred.
As we look to the coming year, we see some signs of hope in Afghanistan with the establishment of the Interim Authority in Kabul. It faces the huge task of reconstructing a devastated country long ravaged and impoverished by conflict. The entire international community has a vested interest in ensuring that the children of Afghanistan grow up in a country where there is real hope and opportunity and there is a profound responsibility on all of us to do what we can to help the people of Afghanistan to build a thriving and peaceful civic society. Ireland is already playing its part with plans to add significantly to the EUR 5.08 million Ireland Aid provided in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in 2001.
The forthcoming conference in Tokyo on reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan, which will be attended by Minister Brian Cowen, is a crucial step forward as is the appointment of an EU Special Representative on Afghanistan. We hope and pray that out of all these efforts will come a culture of mutual care and respect and a new healthier set of relationships between Afghanistan and the rest of the world, especially the West and indeed within Afghanistan.
Regrettably, Afghanistan is not the only part of the world where conflict continues. In the Middle East a sad succession of tit for tat killings have made the task of peacemakers onerous almost to the point of impossibility. And yet none of us can be allowed the indulgence of giving up, of simply surrendering to the forces of chaos. Ireland has been actively engaged in support of the peace process both in cooperation with our EU Partners and as a Member of the UN Security Council. We fully respect and support the legitimate rights of both the Palestinian people and the State of Israel and this will continue to be the basis for our engagement in the search for peace in the coming year. Here too we hope and pray that the idea of peace will make its way into more and more hearts and that somehow despite all the hurt and all the fear, sufficient generosity of spirit will be found to carry the peace process forward.
This year saw the end of our service with UNIFIL and I would like to pay tribute to the valour of the many Irish men and women who served with distinction in the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon over the past 23 years. We continue of course to be committed to UN peacekeeping around the world and Irish personnel have recently taken up duty with the UN peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia-Eritrea, but the huge public popularity of the stand-down parade which marked our leaving of Lebanon bore testimony to the enormous pride our defence forces have brought to their homeland. They are great ambassadors for Ireland and for peace.
Peace and peacemaking are soft words, which demand the hardest and most arduous work. The better the fluency and friendliness that exists between nations the more secure we all are. Our global interdependence grows more obvious by the day and in this context, Ireland is proud to have been a member of the UN Security Council for the past year. We look forward to continuing our constructive engagement on the Security Council to the end of our term and continuing to be witnesses to the power of small nations to make a real contribution to global politics.
Ireland Aid, the Irish people’s official development assistance programme, forms an integral and highly important part of Ireland’s foreign policy. Ireland Aid has in recent years seen monumental developments, not least among these, the decision that Ireland will join that very small group of nations that meets the UN target for Overseas Development Assistance of 0.7% of GNP by the end of 2007 and reach an interim target of 0.45% of GNP by the end of 2002, just months away now. This decision and the actions and funds that flow in its wake can truly be said to be historic and place Ireland well on the way towards meeting our international responsibilities in this area.
I wish to pay special tribute to the selfless work undertaken by development workers with NGOs, missionary groups and the Ireland Aid programme. Their achievements were brought home to me personally during my visit to Africa last October. Meeting the poorest citizens of Uganda and Kenya working side by side with Irish and international development workers was a genuine and memorable privilege. It was also a stern reminder of how many of our brothers and sisters live lives of unremitting awfulness, made worse by the absence of education and the appalling scourge of Aids. The sheer wastefulness of violence and conflict in a world with so many pressing basic human needs to be met, continues to be a scandal which ought to embarrass all us of infinitely more than it seems to do.
Yesterday’s election of an Irishman as President of the European Parliament was a proud and historic event for this country. I wish my former colleague and old friend, Pat Cox well in the hugely important work he must now undertake on behalf of the citizens of the Union. In Ireland, as in the rest of the Union, there is a belief that, notwithstanding the Union’s manifest successes and achievements, there is a real need for it to connect better with its citizens. Our National Forum on Europe will hopefully capture the ideas and concerns of our people and will feed into the forthcoming Convention on the Future of Europe. There is now an exciting opportunity for Union citizens to put their stamp on the reforms which will give new shape, fresh impetus, to the Union in the years ahead.
It is clear that, even allowing for those concerns, there is a strong national consensus that Ireland’s experience of EU membership has been hugely positive, and that Ireland’s place remains at the heart of the Union. There is also steadfast support for the enlargement of the Union, which is seen as representing both an historic imperative and an immense opportunity, for current and future Member States alike.
The introduction of the euro in the 12 Eurozone countries on the 1st of January has been a resounding success. All those involved in this great enterprise in Ireland and throughout Europe are to be congratulated on the smooth efficiency of the changeover. They prepared the ground well. But here in Ireland it is worth remarking that the sheer openness of the Irish people to this huge change was and is nothing short of outstanding and it is a matter of considerable pride that the speed of conversion of the people to the euro was quicker than even the most sophisticated punt-euro conversion machine. This powerful symbol, now in daily use is a clear reminder of our common European identity and our common future.
Our economic interdependency was highlighted graphically by the sudden economic downturn which followed on September 11th. Ireland, like many other countries was adversely affected. Much of our recent success has been driven by the performance of our exports in a strong global economy and when that economy wobbles we all feel the reverberation to some extent. The measures taken by Governments and Central Bankers to restore confidence in the world economy will we hope bear fruit this year, in market stability and steady growth.
Although this is not the best week to trumpet progress on peace in Northern Ireland, it is in many ways precisely the right time to remind ourselves of just how much has been accomplished by the peacemakers. This week reminds us how malign are the forces of evil they are up against and how peacemaking is not a job for the fainthearted or cowardly. Despite the sectarian tensions and the considerable violence especially from protestant paramilitaries during the past year, there has been steady and tangible progress towards the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. It was very reassuring to see the political institutions up and running and a truly significant start made by the IRA to the process of putting their share of the paramilitary arms completely and verifiably beyond use; a new beginning to inclusive, community-based Policing, and a Policing Board which remarkably managed to agree on a badge everyone could sign up to. It would be churlish to play down the impressive catalogue of changes and developments which the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement has produced. These are the things which give us hope that hatred will not triumph. These are the vehicles which will some day bring about a community where children are not poisoned or damaged by the language of sectarian contempt, where those who use such language are silenced by the overwhelming will of the people for a different and better world.
The trauma suffered by children attending Holy Cross school in North Belfast brings home to all of us the abysmal consequences of failing to effectively challenge sectarian thoughtways and sectarian activities. The best hope for Northern Ireland is for people to stand shoulder to shoulder, Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Nationalist, Loyalist and Republican in their assertion that each human life is sacred, each worthy of respect, each a brother and a sister, a colleague a neighbour, a partner in building a new Northern Ireland. The post office workers did that yesterday along with many people right across all those so-called divides and they sent a powerful message of hope for the future even in the midst of grief.
In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge and celebrate your work as diplomats in intensifying links with the international community. We are particularly delighted to greet the representatives of the four countries which have opened resident Missions in Dublin since this time last year. Hopefully all of you, and your families, will have pleasant memories of your years in Ireland to carry to your future postings. I would be delighted to think that your children will in time become young ambassadors for Ireland.
I would like to thank our entertainers this afternoon, Mary Kelly who played the harp so beautifully in the hall on your arrival, the very talented Celtic Divas in this room, and our MC Eugene Downes.
Before we raise our glasses, I want to thank Your Excellencies again for your kind wishes.
Gúim rath, sonas agus buansíochaín oraibh go léir.
I would like to propose a toast ‑ TO THE HEADS OF STATE HERE REPRESENTED.