REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE FEMMES D’EUROPE GALA CONCERT, BRUSSELS
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE FEMMES D’EUROPE GALA CONCERT, BRUSSELS, THURSDAY, 22ND APRIL, 2004.
Dia dhíbh a cháirde.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
Congratulations to the wonderful Femmes d’Europe for organising tonight’s Gala Concert, for giving us this chance to relax in each other’s company and to enjoy a feast of wonderful music. The Irish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Catherine Hunka has already entertained us beautifully and soon we will hear the mystical, evocative voices of Anúna which I know, from experience, are going to captivate us.
What better way to celebrate the work of the Association Femmes d’Europe, than through the language of music, with its remarkable capacity to transcend boundaries, to provoke cultural curiosity, to make friends of strangers and to spread joy. These very things have been at the heart of this association and its work for the past three decades. Women from different cultures and backgrounds, different world views and circumstances choose through this association to get to know one another, to support and befriend each other and then to use their collective talents and energies to reach out to the world’s poor or neglected with kindness, generosity and love.
In a world where so many lives are wasted through poverty, conflict, lack of education or marginalisation, you quietly offer hope and opportunity to the most disadvantaged. Children who live off rubbish dumps in Cambodia, autistic children in Greece, marginalized women in the Republic of Congo, street children in Bolivia, these and many more have reason to be grateful to the work of this association and reason to look forward to tomorrow.
The work is not done for thanks and yet it is deserving of our gratitude and tonight I express the gratitude of the people of Ireland who have a long history of concern for the world’s overlooked and suffering peoples, a concern born of a time when we were counted among them. Today, Ireland has a story of success to tell but while we are now a relatively prosperous first world country, we have a third world memory that connects us powerfully to the 1.2 billion brother and sister human beings whose lives are blighted by abject poverty.
They need help and they need hope. They need to know that we care and that we are offended to see them tragically staring in as mere spectators at “the banquet of life” to use an expression of the late Pope Paul the Sixth. Their inclusion in life’s banquet is our challenge and our task.
Next week the European Union will widen its embrace to include ten new member states. Accession Day will send out a powerful message of faith in partnership, democratic dialogue and consensus. As our European family works together to build a 21st century of peace and widespread prosperity for its children, let us hope that the spirit of intercultural friendship and outreach to the poor exemplified by this Association, will capture the imagination of Europe’s new generations and that they will bring forward the day when our world’s fullest and best potential is revealed.
May our children and grandchildren reflect with pride on the mothers and grandmothers and all the women of vision who created and sustained and now carry forward the Association Femmes d’Europe, an Association to be truly proud of.
Go raibh maith agaibh. Thank you.