SPEECH by the President of ireland, mary Mcaleese, at the State Banquet, PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, WARSAW
SPEECH by the President of ireland, mary Mcaleese, at the State Banquet, PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, WARSAW, tuesday, 3 June, 2003
Your Excellency, President Kwasniewski and Pani Kwasniewska
Distinguished Guests
Ta áthas mór orm bheith sa bPólainn.
Bardzo się cieszę, że jestem w Polsce.
I should like to thank you, President Kwasniewski, for your kind invitation to visit Poland. It allows my husband Martin and I to fulfil a long held ambition to see at first hand a country whose struggles and courage have been an inspirational part of our lives and times. We greatly appreciate the warm welcome that has been extended to us and our delegation.
We have arrived in interesting times just as Poland decides on membership of the European Union. This has been described as the most important decision to be made in your country since the round table talks of 1989 and the transition from a one party state to a multi-party democracy. It has certainly been a very busy time for the Polish Government, representatives of civil society and you yourself Mr. President. While it is not for me to advise the Polish people on their decision, I can certainly tell you that the Irish people would look forward to welcoming Poland into the European Union family in Dublin next May. We feel privileged that the historic enlargement of EU will occur during Ireland’s term of office as EU Presidency in the first half of 2004.
Ireland has now been a member of the European Union for three decades. We have been delighted to share our experience with Poland and I know that our authorities will continue to be as helpful as possible and to work with you on the basis of shared interests and longstanding friendship.
Eighty-five years ago, on this very day in 1918 the victors in the First World War recognised the principle of Polish independence. That year also saw the Irish elected representatives firmly rejecting continued foreign domination in favour of our own national independence. But independence is not the whole story. As your poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid said ‘A nation consists not just of what distinguishes it from other nations, but also of what binds it to other nations’.
Our stories are not the same but they are similar, so similar that they give us an intuitive understanding and instinctive empathy with each other. We shared the common fate of being dominated for long periods by stronger powers. We both managed, in spite of considerable difficulties, to retain our sense of national identity. Indeed it could be said that for Ireland as for Poland, the regaining of independence was the central national narrative. Poetry and music have always played an important role in that narrative and in preserving our identity so it is not surprising that we share a deep love of literature, music and song.
In spite of distance and differences of language, the Polish and Irish have managed to inspire each other’s national idealism. Early nineteenth century Polish poets, including that great pioneer of European unity Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki admired Ireland’s national poet Thomas Moore, and found in his melancholy laments for lost freedom, an echo of their own situation. The unsuccessful insurrections in Poland in the 1800s provoked a flood of pro-Polish verse in Irish nationalist newspapers, where the identification with the sufferings of the Polish people was based on an unspoken analogy with what was happening in Ireland. This process of linking Ireland’s fate with that of Poland culminated in 1920, at the height of the Irish struggle for independence. In that year, in what was clearly intended to be a strong symbolic statement, Mickiewicz’s great hymn to freedom The Books of the Polish People and the Polish Pilgrimage was translated into Irish and published in Dublin.
We have both had the experience, as the result of economic difficulties at home, of mass emigration to North America and other parts of the world. Although, over the centuries, there have been occasional travellers from Ireland to Poland and Poland to Ireland, I suspect that it was in the great cities of the United States that our two peoples first met each other in significant numbers. Those who remained at home rejoiced when emigrants from both countries succeeded in their new lives and contributed to the development of their new homelands. I know that you attach great importance to maintaining close contact with the Polish people abroad. We equally value our links with the Irish family throughout the world. As they, and their descendents, prospered in freedom abroad, as their natural genius found sympathetic environments in which to blossom, we began to see what could be accomplished at home as a result of the same combination of freedom, opportunity and determination. In the case of Ireland, there had been an acceptance that political independence would be incomplete, unless complemented by economic independence. This, in turn, led to the realisation that the economic well being of our people could best be secured by exercising our hard-won sovereignty within the collegial framework of the European Union.
Mr. President, since your own visit to Ireland almost six years ago, our bilateral relationship has gone from strength to strength. Exchanges at political and official level reflect the growing interaction on EU related issues as we consult on matters of common interest and concern. Trade and economic relations continue to flourish and I am very pleased that a large Irish business delegation is visiting Poland this week in order to intensify existing contacts and develop new relationships. We in Ireland attach great importance to personal contacts in business, as in other fields, and I am confident that the contacts that are forged this week will bear fruit in the coming months and years, not just in the purely economic sense, but through the nurturing of friendship, mutual respect and partnership between our countries and peoples. Ireland has a great love for Poland and longed for a day when her fullest genius and potential would reveal itself, just as we have dreamt of a day when Ireland’s best destiny too would come to pass. We belong to privileged generations for we have had sight of the future our forefathers dreamed of, hoped in, despaired of at times, but always believed in. Now we are the hands of their work.
I now invite you, distinguished guests, to raise your glasses and to drink:
to the health and happiness of you, Mr. President, and Pani Kwasniewska
to peace and prosperity for the people of Poland
and to continued friendship and partnership between the peoples of Ireland and Poland
Stolat or, as we say in Irish, Gura fada buan thú.