Remarks By President OF IRELAND, Mary McAleese At Irish Fellowship Club Dinner, Chicago
Remarks By President OF IRELAND, Mary McAleese At Irish Fellowship Club Dinner, Chicago Monday, 5 May 2003
Táim fíor bhuíoch as ucht an fáilte a chuireadh romham anocht. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
Thank you for that introduction and the warm Chicago welcome. It is good to be here and to have this chance to meet so many friends of Ireland through the Irish Fellowship Club. I am more than a little late for as many of you know I had planned to come to Chicago for the Centenary Dinner of the Fellowship Club in October 2001. The appalling events of September 11th put paid to that as indeed it put paid to so many lives and hopes and dreams. But you are a patient and indomitable people and I want to express my thanks to the organisers of tonight’s event, to the Honorable John Daly, to the Honorable James Houlihan and of course to Ms. Kathy Taylor.
Immediately after 9/11 there was an outpouring of grief and solidarity right around the world. Among all the nations who mourned with America, Ireland alone held a National Day of Mourning. Why? - because we are not simply friends, we are family, bonded to one another by the lived lives of millions of our ancestors who loved America and loved Ireland in equal measure. For over a century this club has been a careful steward of those bonds, creating a forum in which they are renewed from generation to generation, creating a place of welcome for the Irish and their friends.
A hundred years ago you were the outward sign of an Irish community growing in self-confidence as it surveyed the blossoming of its talent in a land of opportunity. It would be many generations before Ireland itself became a land of opportunity but I am proud today to represent a modern successful and high achieving Ireland which owes so much to the faithfulness and generosity of its emigrant sons and daughters. This club has played its own important part in affirming the Irish in Chicago and encouraging the Irish in Ireland. The list of your past Presidents is a who’s who of Chicago’s civic and business life, a testimony to the contribution made to the warp and weft of this city by so many of Ireland’s children. I congratulate Mr. Jim Sweeney on joining such distinguished company this year and wish him fun and fulfilment in equal measure.
Yesterday I witnessed a piece of the Club’s history at the Irish-American Heritage Centre when I sat in the enormous chair which the Club had specially constructed for President Taft when he addressed the St. Patrick’s Day Dinner in 1910. Judging by its dimensions he must have truly been a larger than life character – either that or it was some dinner. Thankfully I have a few dinners to go before I could do justice to that chair.
Besides our love of music, dance, company and craic, the Irish are noted for their generosity to good causes. The Irish Fellowship Club has faithfully honoured that tradition in many ways but none so close to Irish hearts as your wonderful donation to the Special Olympics World Games which Ireland is proud to host this year, the first country outside the United States ever to do so. What is particularly exciting is that the entire island of Ireland is involved, Dublin and Belfast, Derry and Cork, Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist, all working together to make these the best games ever. Could there be any better showcase of how radically things have changed in Ireland? - How rooted is the peace promised by the Good Friday Agreement and how much we have to look forward to in a new future built on the partnership and friendship which history deprived us of until now.
As we continue with the vital multi-faceted and painstaking work of peace-building, we are reassured by and grateful for the continuing support and encouragement of the United States, President Bush and his Administration, Representatives on both sides of the U.S. Congress as well as our many friends, among them the Irish Fellowship Club. President Bush visited Belfast just last month and his Special Envoy, Ambassador Richard Haass, has been deeply engaged in the negotiation process. U.S. support for the International Fund for Ireland has allowed many peace-building projects to flourish and to bring hope where there was once only distrust and despair. All these things have profound effects which simply cannot be underestimated. Our American family and its friends have helped change Ireland’s future and I am delighted to have this opportunity to say thank you for your help, and above all, for your loyal friendship.
For a small island we have a complex history and the scars to show for it. The road to peace is the antithesis of a smooth free-running four land highway. It bears more resemblance to the rough, potholed cattle tracks my great grand uncle P.B. Flanagan left behind him when he came to Chicago in the late 19th century. But just as those difficult winding roads brought him from poverty in County Roscommon to prosperity in Chicago, so too the hard road of peace is bringing us from hatred to hope.
The evidence of huge progress is there to see. The landscape of today, for all its uncertainties and unfinished business, is the best it has ever been. The relationship between Ireland and Britain is characterised by a warmth and collegiality no century has ever known. Before its suspension, the Northern Ireland Executive led by David Trimble and Seamus Mallon and latterly Mark Durkan, showed that the two sides to the conflict could work productively and collegially for the betterment of all the people of Northern Ireland. Please God it will soon do so again. No previous generation in Northern Ireland ever lived to see such a phenomenon, just as none before ours saw the power of the official cross-border partnerships set up under the Good Friday Agreement, which are transforming sectors like tourism, trade, food safety and a host of others. No other generation has had the reassurance of entrenched human and civil rights and of a police force which all can have faith in, regardless of creed or politics.
No other generation has so comprehensively turned its back on violence and set its faith in the politics of democratic dialogue. The enormous transforming potential of the Agreement derives from the hearts of the people. Hard hearts have softened and the future lies with the softened hearts.
You have been with us through all the ups and downs, the dizzy in and outs, the good days and the bad, which have brought us to these better times. I know you will stay the course with us for we are not just friends we are family. Here in Chicago the hardworking sons and daughters of Ireland sent home their hard earned cents and dollars to a country they loved dearly but had to leave if they were to have any hope, any future at all. They nurtured a vision in their hearts, a vision they shared with their children and grandchildren, of an Ireland standing tall among the world’s nations, an Ireland whose genius was bringing prosperity, equal opportunity and peace to its people at home. That Ireland is in sight. We are a lucky generation to be able to see it from where we stand but only because we stand on the shoulders of those to whom we owe so much. We remember them with pride tonight, grateful for one hundred and two years of commitment to this club, this city, this country and to Ireland. I would like to think that they in turn are proud of today’s Ireland.
Beannacht Dé oraibh i gcónaí.