Speech at the Saint Patrick’s Day Reception
Áras an Uachtaráin, 17th March 2012
Sabina and I would like to welcome all of you to this reception at Áras an Uachtaráin for our first Saint Patrick’s Day here.
Saint Patrick’s Day is a day of celebration for all of the Irish around the world, of whatever age, and in whatever circumstances and it is a day of celebration too for all those who value and relate to Ireland and the Irish.
Saint Patrick’s Day is an opportunity for Irish people everywhere to joyously acknowledge our shared heritage and culture and, to make of our commitment to our shared Irishness, something of which we all can be proud. Indeed the life story of Saint Patrick himself is one of perseverance through adversity, generosity overcoming cruelty and assisting a people in being transformed through the power of spiritual idealism. Just as St. Patrick brought a vision of hope and renewal to the Irish people of his time, we in our time have our own Aisling – our dream of a better, kinder, fairer shared world.
We have much to be proud of the friendliness of our people, our humanitarian concerns expressed abroad through our Peace-Keeping Forces and all of those who work in aid in different ways.
In my inauguration speech on that wonderful day in Dublin Castle last November, I said that my Presidency would seek to be one that seeks to achieve an inclusive citizenship, where every citizen participates and everyone is treated with respect, that I want to achieve an Ireland where all citizens realise their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; their rights to participate in public debate, their rights to contribute creatively to and enjoy in all its facets this great country of ours.
This year, the Saint Patrick’s Day Reception recognises all of your work for inclusion and your experience and knowledge of its importance.
It is important, indeed critical, that the rich diversity of 21st century Ireland, that you represent here today, is acknowledged, nurtured and celebrated. But we must go beyond diversity, of course, and work for the kind of society where each citizen can succeed in fulfilling their dreams and realise their unique potential.
Citizenship is a valuable source of solidarity, a source of energy which binds and drives communities into positive action. But if it is to realise its transformative power, the German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas reminds us that it has to be associated not only with the narrowly construed civil and political rights but also with the fulfilment of fundamental social and cultural rights.
Active citizenship refers to that wide range of action, initiatives, and public advocacy which many of you here engage in during your daily work. Your leadership in raising awareness of citizenship rights, in expanding the understanding of what that entails as our society evolves is very important in the development of critical social consciousness. Efforts to improve the public provision of social services, to render them more responsive to the needs of the marginalised, while painstaking, and certainly not glamorous, are critical in building the conditions in which citizens are enabled to act as citizens.
The active engagement of all of our citizens in decision making at local and national levels is a hallmark of inclusive citizenship. Such participatory decision making depends on both enhancing the capacities of people who previously have been excluded from decision making, on the one hand and on creating, and if necessary reforming, the institutional mechanisms for their voice to be heard on the other.
I realise there are many challenges to achieving real inclusive citizenship. Social inequality is a real obstacle to inclusive citizenship. Laws and cultural practices which privilege men over women, or privilege one religion over another, or favour someone on the basis of where they are from, or where they studied, are pernicious obstacles to inclusivity. We are fortunate here in Ireland to have a framework of progressive equality legislation, including the Equal Status Act and Employment Equality Acts, which prohibit discrimination on nine specified grounds. But the administrative delivery of the spirit as well as the letter of legislation is a different thing and does not happen overnight. We know from the regular reports from the Equality Authority that we still encounter discrimination against women, migrants and the disabled in both the workplace and the wider society. We know from the regular monitoring of attitudes to people with disabilities by the National Disability Authority that our commitment to equality is taking place against a backdrop of increasingly negative public attitudes towards those in our society who may require accommodation, supports and programmes to assist them in participating in mainstream society.
Poverty is both a great indicator of a failure to deliver inclusive citizenship and it constitutes another great impediment to inclusive citizenship. We cannot consider ourselves an inclusive society as long as there are those of our citizens who cannot engage with society in all its richness because they are trapped in economic circumstances that suffocate them and leave them drained of life. Or those that cannot participate due to absence of childcare or other services or due to the poor health that often attends poverty.
Where there are those who believe that inequality is inevitable, or even beneficial. There is now concrete evidence to the contrary. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett from the University of York set out, in their exuberant book of a few years ago, The Spirit Level, how almost everything, from life expectancy, to levels of mental illness, illiteracy and violence in the community – is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. They provide hard facts which demonstrate that societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them, including the well off, that a more equal society is a healthier society judged by almost every indicator.
The protections of our state must be sufficient to ensure that all citizens have the means to participate, to engage, to shape their world. A society scarred by great divisions of power and wealth is not a society in which the human spirit can flourish.
Social inequalities and poverty are two of the great challenges we face. However another great moral and intellectual challenge lies in the inclination towards cynicism, fatalism, and lack of imagination that has been one of the sad legacies of our economic boom and subsequent downturn.
It seems to me we are in danger of, as the Canadian Philosopher, Charles Taylor put it, drifting towards an un-freedom that can be best summarised as the transition from the concept of citizenship with implications for interdependence, transcendence of self and solidarity, and indeed justice, to a concept of consumerism which is market driven, individualised, privatised and insatiable of satisfaction. What is needed is our recovery of the capacity to question the inevitabilities by which we have come to live. We must recall and cherish that which makes us truly human: our consciousness, our capacity to question, to critique and shape the world in which we live and raise future generations.
After extensive research on inequality two recent authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket tell us that:
“Egalitarian sentiments are hidden close to the hearts of vast numbers of people of all shades of political opinion. Most people know how much we sacrifice to consumerism and know that there are few things nicer than relaxing with friends and equals. They also know that it is family, friends and community that matter to happiness and know that our present way of life is ruining the planet. The culture of the last few decades has reduced us to closet egalitarians: it is time we came out of the woodwork and set a course for sanity.”
I wholeheartedly agree with this. We need to rebuild a sense of trust and community so that we can build a new economy predicated on a shared common good, rather than speculative aspirations for individual aggrandizement. We must work together, collectively to build this active inclusive citizenship; based on participation, equality, and respect for all the flowering of creativity in all its forms. A confident and creative people is our aim, a people at ease with itself, a people that know and act consistent with the knowledge that our strength lies in our social solidarity; that together we have limitless possibilities – feidireachtaí gan teorainn.
As we celebrate this great day, in this wonderful sunshine, in the house of the people, your home and mine, (perhaps more mine than yours for the next seven years) let us remember that the capacity to change our world still exists, and we can create a new world rather than remain lodged in our recent difficulties. I have often quoted the great social theorist and scholar of cultural matters, Raymond Williams. In his last book, Towards 2000 he wrote:
“Once the inevitabilities are challenged, we have begun to gather our resources for a journey of hope”.
He reminds us in this, that we too, by awakening to our responsibilities as citizens, can take our first steps towards a new society, indeed a new world.
A happy and peaceful Saint Patrick’s Day to you all.