SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE, AT THE WILD GEESE DINNER, 17 MARCH, 2002
SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE, AT THE WILD GEESE DINNER, 17 MARCH, 2002
Dia dhíobh a cháirde. Tá lúcháir orm bheith anseo libh ar Lá Fhéile Phádraig agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díobh as an cuireadh, agus as an fáilte caoin, cneasta, agus croíúil a chuir sibh romham.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to visit the lovely State of Connecticut during my first visit as President of Ireland to the United States for St. Patrick’s Day. I am especially pleased to be in Stamford, and to mark the day with our good friends from the Wild Geese and your many supporters.
The primary purpose of my visit on this St.Patrick’s Day is to reaffirm in person the continuing heartfelt sympathy and solidarity of the Irish people with the people of the United States following the awful events of September 11th last. A shudder went through the entire world that day and almost every corner of the globe lost a son or a daughter, our own small island among those who counted her dead in disbelief and profound sadness. The litany of Irish names in the ranks of the dead emergency rescue personnel is particularly poignant. Tonight, we remember all those who were lost on that day, and we pay a special tribute to those who gave their lives trying to help others. We remember the suffering of the bereaved and injured, of those whose peace of mind has been shaken and is still far from at rest. We remember with gratitude, those whose gift of friendship and comfort has made these times more bearable and we remember with compassion those who carry the awesome burden of steering our world to steadier times.
I have heard many people say that their lives changed that day and I am sure that many here would say the same. We were brutally introduced to the vulnerability of an open and free society. We were shocked by the power of imaginations fuelled by hatred. And yet during those bleak days, we turned with fresh insight to our loved ones, to our beliefs, to all we hold dear and to each other. In a world that carried shadows beyond our comprehension we looked for evidence of light. We are not of course the first generation to know such grief or to face such an abyss. There have been many Gethsemane Days in human history and the island of Ireland has known its share of man-made wild grief almost beyond comfort. And out of all sorts of shambles, human beings have scraped together the courage to go on, to dream again and to live life fully. Sometimes it is hard to know where that strength comes from but some of it surely comes from the strength of our faith, from our lived traditions of endurance and transcendence, from our historical experience of helping each other through.
Those of us who are Irish are indeed fortunate for we have a proud heritage characterised by great resilience. That very heritage was the seed-bed for our unique relationship with the United States, a relationship created by millions of men and women who left Ireland in despair, came here in hope and whose stories call us to an unshakeable faith in the human spirit. We, their successors, live in very different times and in a very different world, but to us they gave a hunger for fairness, justice and peace. We are custodians of that baton, we have stewardship of it today, to use well in our times and under our own testing conditions. The Wild Geese take that stewardship seriously and we are indebted to them for the way in which those historic links are kept fresh, dynamic and vibrant from generation to generation. Your work is an investment in our common humanity, putting the resource of Irish culture, heritage, tradition and experience into the bank of civic strength. I am certain that in the days and months after that grim September Day, you more than once gave thanks that there was such an organization, that there was a structure to turn to, a handrail to hold on to, a heritage to remember and draw strength from. It is a humbling thought that the line of cultural continuity linking all of us here tonight stretches as far back as the architects of Newgrange, the illuminators of the Book of Kells who took the Christian faith to every part of Europe, to the master craftsperson who made the Ardagh Chalice, the poets who have been our nation’s chief glory in centuries past and the many gifted statesmen and women, writers, dancers, actors, singers and artists who continue to be so prominent today.
Every so often we have to remind ourselves, no matter how reluctantly, that St. Patrick was not an Irish man by birth - by adoption and by choice yes, but not by birth. He was an immigrant and for that very reason his story resonates deeply here in the United States. He arrived as a stranger - a talented stranger, who used the gifts God gave him to enrich his new homeland and ultimately to change its destiny. In many ways he was foreshadowing the future legacy of the Irish emigrants around the world, and particularly here in America, who arrived as strangers, made this their home, put their gifts at the service of their new communities and by the sweat of their brows grew a random patchwork of people into this great nation, the most successful on our planet. The wide embrace of diversity has been crucial to that success and it is a trait we find woven into Ireland’s history - for despite being an island and a small one at that, our best instincts have never been insular. In fact today’s highly successful Ireland, economically buoyant and culturally dynamic, is largely due to our adaptability, our willingness to absorb change and the fluency and friendliness of our relationships with the rest of the world. Among the things we cherish is our membership of a huge global Irish family which has produced more than its fair share of giants and geniuses in every sphere of human endeavour. Almost inevitably thoughts turn to the field of literature, poetry and drama and to that great academy where the names of so many extraordinary men and women born on the island of Ireland have been joined by the names of our emigrants’ children and grandchildren - their homeland, the United States, their work, a testimony to the grip Ireland has on the creative imagination. Today it is not possible to talk of Irish culture as something exclusively rooted in or focused on the island of Ireland but rather it is a web that stretches across our contemporary globe and down through centuries wherever Irish people have gone.
Although we have perhaps been most associated with the written word in the past, today the cultural heritage we are building for the future includes work by gifted artists across a very broad range of areas and embraces, art, popular music, traditional music, film and dance. Today a new, confident generation is filling our shared cultural reservoir and a galaxy of new names carries Irish culture to enthusiastic audiences across the world. The flowering of their genius vindicates the wasted lives of so many of our ancestors who were ground down by the crude oppression of British colonialism. Today, Ireland’s name is synonymous with championing the high values which distinguish the civilised from the uncivilised and which challenge the credentials of the under-civilised who masquerade as more than they are.
Tonight, speaking to an audience named after such an illustrious group of Irish emigrants, it is hard to avoid remembering the millions of Irish lives invested in today’s Ireland and in today’s United States. Some knew little but the darkness of defeat in emigration; for others it was a great adventure and for still others, it was a vocation calling them to the service of the poor in other lands. Long before Ireland had ambassadors and consuls these were the people who introduced the world to our small island home. Thankfully, the darkest days of emigration are firmly consigned to the past. We have a country with a booming economy which for the first time in 150 years is increasing its population.
Today, people come to Ireland from all over the world, bringing the diversity of their own cultures with them. And there is an unstoppable flowering of contemporary cultural expression which has brought great confidence in ourselves and in our future. The historic Good Friday Agreement has set the scene for peace with justice in Northern Ireland and while we are under no illusions about how difficult it is to shift from a closed and violent culture, with poor relationships with its neighbour to the South, to an open, fair and democratic one engaged in effective partnership with that neighbour, nonetheless the progress made so far is reassuring. We owe the United States a huge debt of gratitude for the support and encouragement we have received and continue to receive in the efforts to construct a lasting peace. We particularly welcome the continuing commitment of President Bush and his administration, and our many friends in Congress and throughout the United States, as we continue to work together to implement the Agreement in full over the coming years.
Our links with our friends here in the United States remain, in the words of Yeats “at our deep heart’s core”. It is not surprising that they should. We have travelled many a journey together in good times and in bad. We have kept faith with each other and given each other inspiration. In such a turbulent and troubled world where chaos is sometimes hard to escape, our steadfast friendship is the greatest gift we can continue to give each other. It feeds our hope, restores our faith in humanity and helps us to find again the energy, the courage to believe that we can by our efforts, make this world a better place for all of God’s common human family. America is better for the Wild Geese and Ireland is lucky to have such friends, such wonderful ambassadors.
I thank each and every one of you for all that you have done for Ireland and for the promotion of Irish culture in Connecticut and I wish you a day of happy memories in the company of friends old and new this St. Patrick’s Day.
Lúireach Pádraig go raibh ina sciath cosanta oraibh go brách. Go raibh maith agaibh.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Thank you.