REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE SEIMAS VILNIUS THURSDAY, 24 MAY, 2007
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE SEIMAS VILNIUS THURSDAY, 24 MAY, 2007
LABAS RITAS! MAN MALONÚ BU-T LIÉTUVOYÁ.
Good Morning! I am delighted to be here in Lithuania.
I bring warm greetings from the people of Ireland to the very heartland of Lithuania’s democracy here in your national Parliament. It is an honour to address the political leaders of modern Lithuania, the men and women who are helping to build the best Lithuania ever.
It is particularly satisfying to come both as a friend and as a partner in the European Union. 50 years ago when the Treaty of Rome came into being our two troubled countries hardly dared to hope that one day we too could be part of this great project. Yet here we are, two modern democracies, flourishing in freedom and our futures entwined.
Not so long ago we were separated more by history than by geography but it is that very history of suffering, oppression, endurance and transcendence which today gives us an innate understanding of one another. We are relatively small countries once trapped in the shadow of much larger dominating neighbours and both determined to prove our worth to ourselves and to the world. And what remarkable transformations we are both experiencing. Today’s Ireland and today’s Lithuania offer to the world, inspirational stories of conflict ended, of poverty tackled, of growing prosperity. The endemically poor, underachieving old Ireland with generations of huge outward migration has become famous around the world for the success of its Celtic tiger economy. In more recent days, the longstanding violent conflict in Northern Ireland, both sectarian and political in its character, has ended. The once fraught relationship between Ireland and Great Britain has metamorphosed into a close collegial friendship out of which came the joint endeavour, which nurtured the peace process. It has been a long and tortuous process but has now culminated, I am delighted to say, in a breakthrough in recent weeks of almost miraculous proportions.
Earlier this month a new devolved Government took office in Northern Ireland. It is a coalition of parties representing all sides of Northern Ireland’s divided society and it is led by members of political parties whose enmity is so deep that even still some cannot bring themselves to shake hands with their fellow ministers. Yet they have courageously agreed to set aside their historic hostility and work together to build a fair, just and equal democracy for all the people of Northern Ireland. The future relationship between the two estranged parts of Ireland will now also be characterised by good neighbourliness and partnership, so at last all the relationships damaged and twisted by history have been unravelled, straightened out and set on a healthy footing.
In no other century has Ireland ever known a moment like this, when there has been a confluence of peace, prosperity and partnership. The future is full of hope. We know only too well that we would not be in this happy position but for the help and support of our friends in the international community and in particular our European family of nations, who encouraged the peace Process even through dark days. I take this opportunity to express to our dear friends in Lithuania our deep appreciation for your support and solidarity.
You know better than many how difficult it is to heal the wounds of bitter history and at the same time to rebuild a society torn apart politically, socially and economically. But your story also bears witness to the possibility of huge change and the triumph of truth.
Your own national story is an inspirational one. During decades of outside domination your resilient and brave people held firm to their national identity and their belief in the right to self-determination. Ireland never recognised Soviet control of your country and we rejoiced first in your freedom and then in your membership of the European Union, your restoration to our common European homeland.
What a long journey you have travelled in such a short time. Not only can you be justly proud of your achievements but we share your pride for we have always had huge faith in the small, oppressed nations of the world to be the champions of freedom, democracy, human rights, the dignity of the human person, to be in fact the conscience of the world.
Both Ireland and Lithuania have learned many valuable lessons from our respective journeys to freedom and these will enable us to make our own distinctive contribution to the efforts of the international community to end conflict and abuse of power wherever in the world they are causing needless, wasteful suffering. We also both remember with stark clarity what it was like to be poor, to be overlooked, to feel overwhelmed by the mountains we had to climb. I remember the Ireland that was a third world country and though today we are a wealthy, high achieving first world country, we have that recent third world memory. It keeps us humble. It keeps us committed to doing our best to help end the endemic poverty, disease and underachievement of the third World.
We hope both through our membership of the European Union, the United Nations and our own Irish Aid programme to the developing world to prove that small nations have big hearts, big imaginations and considerable problem-solving skills that can improve the trajectory, not only of our own nations’ histories, but of the world. Ireland and Lithuania today stand for the very best of human values and the very best of human hopes.
Our experience with post-colonial development gives us a particular perspective on conflict, its origins and resolution. Where big powers tend to look to security solutions and the effectiveness of armed forces, we instinctively look to identify and remedy the alienation and grievances that underlie many tensions in society.
We well understand the concerns and ambitions of poorer countries struggling to assert their identity and to generate economic progress in the face of larger powers, of powerful interests and massive social problems from HIV/Aids to displaced refugees. Our engagement in Northern Ireland has underscored for us the importance of respecting the rights of minority groupings within states, and of ensuring that their voice is heard and their alienation comprehensively addressed.
Lithuania shares our values, understands our passions. As members of the UN and the EU we have exciting possibilities to engage in a wide field of common activities within Europe and the wider world. Our contribution will, I believe, make a difference.
Speaking of making a difference, it is important that I acknowledge with gratitude the contribution being made to Ireland by those of your country men and women who have made their lives among us, whether for the long or short term. For the first time in a century and a half, Irish men and women have stopped emigrating in their hundreds of thousands. Now our emigrants are returning and our European Union neighbours are joining them as we build this new multicultural Ireland together. Now some 24,000 Lithuanians are our friends, neighbours, colleagues, partners. They are great ambassadors for their country in Ireland and we hope they speak well of us when they come home, whether on holiday or for good. We know what it is to be emigrants, to be far from home and among strangers and as a people legendary for our welcome, we fervently hope that Ireland’s Lithuanian community feels at home among us. Their energy and skills are now an important dynamic in our continuing economic success and cultural confidence. They are helping us to live the vision of the Union’s founders, of a common European homeland where we would all feel at home whether in Vilnius or Dublin.
I am often asked the question, how did Ireland change its fortunes so dramatically and in truth there are many pieces to that jigsaw puzzle. Membership of the Union opened us up, dispelled our insularity, gave us a huge market for our goods, an audience for our culture and heritage and a helping hand to allow our infrastructure to catch up. Our investment in universal free second level and third level education ended the days when we educated only a wealthy elite and so failed to properly harness and harvest our best natural resource, the brain power of all our people. So from having one of Europe’s lowest educational completion rates at second level, today by contrast we have one of the highest rates of third level qualifications in the EU.
Anxious to kick start a modern manufacturing and entrepreneurial sector, we created a climate attractive to investors, low corporate tax, a stable economic climate underpinned by a social partnership between the Government, employers, trade unions, farmers and the community and voluntary sector, an educated, ambitious and young workforce. The formula has worked well for us but of course today’s success is no guarantee of tomorrow’s - and so we are challenged to consolidate these prosperous times and to keep on succeeding in the tough bear pit that is the global market place.
As a small, open economy, Ireland has been able to thrive in the new economic conditions we now refer to as globalisation. The European Union has provided us with a highly positive framework within which to pursue our national goals and of course the same opportunities and challenges are the story of Lithuania.
The great Irish writer, James Joyce, wrote in “Ulysses” that “history…is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. Lithuania and Ireland have done with our days of nightmare. We are now awake to the future, alive to its great possibilities. We are confident in ways we never were before, free to use our energies in ways we never were before. Yes, the expectations of our people are high. Who wants to live with low expectations? We already lived those bad old days - described by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney as living under “high-banked clouds of resignation”. We are a blessed generation for we are out from under those clouds, we are up off our knees and both Ireland and Lithuania are set to prove that the best is yet to come.
THANK YOU