REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE MAYOR OF AUCKLAND
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE MAYOR OF AUCKLAND, AUCKLAND TOWN HALL
Your Worship, the Mayor of Auckland,
Martin Cleary, President of the Auckland Irish Club,
Committee members,
Distinguished guests
Thank you, Mayor Banks, for your kind words of welcome.
I am delighted to join you today, though I confess to being slightly melancholy as my State Visit to New Zealand draws to a close. We have had a wonderful week, during which we have been given the warmest of welcomes everywhere we have gone. If Ireland is the land of a hundred thousand welcomes, then our emigrants to New Zealand must have packed them in their suitcases for the culture of welcome is so very strong here that the stranger is immediately made to feel like family.
I wish to sincerely thank you, Mayor Banks, for your interest in and support for the Irish community in Auckland and for your generous hospitality in facilitating my meeting here today with the members and friends of the Auckland Irish Society. Auckland is home to the largest and most vibrant Irish community in New Zealand. We at home are proud of them, proud of all they do to build up New Zealand, proud of how they bring to civic life here the very best of Irish culture, heritage and values. They are the best ambassadors any country could ask for; they are the bridges that link Ireland and New Zealand as kith and kin, as friends and family.
To the members of the Auckland Irish Society, I congratulate and thank you on your ongoing efforts to foster the links between Ireland and New Zealand and for work among the Irish community in Auckland. We are all members of a strong, united, global Irish family and our connectedness to one another, our care for one another is expressed in and through your work and through financial support offered by the Irish Government to the work of Auckland Irish Welfare.
It is right that our visit should end here in Auckland, the commercial heartland of New Zealand. Today’s Ireland is a far cry from the poor and underachieving place so many emigrants left. Today it is a successful, entrepreneurial and export led economy and so along with our Irish musicians and dancers I am accompanied on this trip by a very strong trade delegation all eager to do business here and to write yet another chapter in the shared history of our two countries.
The Kiwi and the Gael are good friends to one another. Their stories are intertwined through generations of emigrant history and emigrant stories. They have meshed and melded here so deeply that the story of New Zealand cannot be fully told without the story of Ireland and vice versa.
And now a new story is in the making as Maori music and traditional Irish music collaborate in the imaginative Green Fire Islands project, which will be touring New Zealand over the coming months bridging our two ancient island cultures working to craft new music out of the deep wells of the old. The results promise to be hugely exciting I only wish I could be here for the final concert here in Auckland, on St. Patrick’s Day next year.
Another generation, another fresh link between us. Our kinship keeps growing, freshening, coming alive anew. It does so, not by accident but by the hard work, determination and the efforts of many, many people. Some of them are in this room and I thank you for all the ways in which you show the rich fruits of your loving heart for Ireland and your loving heart for New Zealand.
We are two nations with so much to look forward to, two nations able to say with conviction and anticipation that the best is yet to come.