ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF THE VIDEO “THE LIGHT WITHIN”
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF THE VIDEO “THE LIGHT WITHIN” ON TUESDAY 31 MARCH, 1998
Your Grace, Fr. Murphy, ladies and gentlemen, I would like first of all to thank you for the warm welcome which I have received today and I would like to give a special thanks to Cathleen McDonagh for her kind words of welcome. It is a particular pleasure for me, as President, to visit St. Laurence’s, the Parish of the Travelling People, and I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Archdiocese on their vision in establishing this parish – to cater for the spiritual requirements of the travelling community – to embrace them as an ethnic group in the Catholic Church. St. Laurence’s, of course, has a significant role in building healthy, respectful relationships through its solidarity with Travellers. It helps Travellers to have a strong, confident voice in society – to celebrate Traveller faith as a lived reality in their everyday lives – to enable them to take action against the inequalities which directly effect them – and to take their place in Irish society as members of a special and important culture, with its own language, folklore and history – and entitled to its own space and place in the Ireland of the 1990’s.
Our main reason to be here today is to launch the “The Light Within” and I am very grateful for having been invited to perform the launch of this video - which is sensitively produced and raises many of the pertinent issues that effect individuals and families in the travelling community in an Ireland that has changed so dramatically over the last couple of decades. Importantly, the video highlights the fact that the problem of exclusion and prejudice is getting worse – a phenomenon that might seem puzzling in a country that boasts of great economic progress – great new opportunities for its people – a new ‘sophistication’ that would suggest an opposite trend – a more open attitude to ‘others’ in society.
The new found prosperity that has been visited on us seems to have hardened attitudes to those who don’t fit in with the popular model of society – who don’t conform to some acceptable model of lifestyle which this affluence has a tendency to spawn. The downstream consequences of this spurious “will to purity” as it is described by Miroslav Wolf, the theologian, “contains” as he says, “a whole program for arranging our social worlds – from the inner worlds of ourselves to the outer worlds of our families, neighbours, . . . is a dangerous program because it is a totalitarian program, governed by the logic that reduces, ejects, and segregates”.
In contrast to the new affluent Ireland, the plight of members of the travelling community is very different – where it’s often difficult to get a halting site for just five families – where infant and adult mortality rates are over twive those of the ‘settled’ community – where the general health status is much lower – where there is an extremely low level of participation in education. Only last week, the plight of Travellers was reflected in data released from the Central Statistics Office – statistics which make sobering reading – which show that only 1 per cent of travellers are aged 65 or over – that half of traveller families live in serviced roadside halting sites, or in unserviced sites or encampments – that fifty per cent of travellers are less than fifteen yeas of age.
For many people, the ‘solution’ to the treatment of the travelling community is the assimilation of Travellers into their concept of society – to allow them to “survive, even thrive, among us, if you become like us; you can keep your life, if you give up your identity” – or “exclusion by assimilation” as Wolf calls it. Others prefer to opt for the domination method of exclusion – where ‘others’ are assigned “the status of inferior beings . . they cannot live in our neighbourhoods, get certain kinds of jobs, receive equal pay or honour; they must stay in their proper place . . the place we have assigned for them”.
Yet we know that it is neither desirable or possible to homogenise our world – to force everybody to conform to a norm that reduces all to a common denominator that eliminates diversity. We know in fact that diversity is what makes societies and cultures survive and thrive. Harmony is dependent on diversity. And a healthy society is one which celebrates diversity rather than suppresses it; where cultures and traditions draw on each other rather than try to bury each other; where the spiral of civilisation and social development is upward. To achieve that, minds must be capable of opening to the richness of diversity; to the realisation that harmonious co-existence and joyful curiosity - rather than blinkered intransigence - are the way forward.
Addressing this means equipping people with the mindset to recognise and accommodate the ‘otherness’ of others. It involves an acceptance that we are all, to some extent, blinkered by perceptions, prejudices, beliefs, and sometimes plain misinformation. The task is to condition minds and hearts – to move towards a generous, sharing Ireland that encompasses many traditions and cultures - that creates a space for all of its people - where the richness of diversity is not just a virtue, but a profound necessity. As we acknowledge this great reality of diversity, and demand our space it in – we also need to acknowledge in our deepest being, the right of all others to their space too.
The media in all forms, exercise a powerful influence on how we perceive reality - on how we live our lives, and relate to those around us. It can, of course, be a positive or negative influence. It can promote tolerance and respect for diversity, or it can foster stereotypes about, and hostility towards, minorities. The tape we are launching today will go a long way to “bridge the already widening gap” - to quote from the video – to develop “mutual understanding” – to promote an appreciation of the contribution that Travellers, as a distint ethnic group, can make to Irish society - and to allow for the adjustment of attitude needed for mutual acceptance in fulfilling the desire to live “side by side in solidarity”. There are people here from groups and organisations who are also working to improve relations between the settled and traveller communities – people like Crosscare, Pave Point, the Irish Traveller Movement, the National Traveller Women’s Forum, Clondalkin Travellers Development Group. In welcoming the representative of theose groups, I would like to commend them and the many others who as individuals or in groups are helping to promote mutual understanding, respect and acceptance between the Travellers and the settled community.
In launching this video, I would like to pay a particular tribute to its producer, John Cook - to the narrator, Mick Lally – and to all those who had a hand in bringing it to fruition. It is essential viewing and an important step in the mission to promote acceptance of the Traveller Community – a unique, fascinating and distinctive ethnic group of Irish men, women and children - who make a rich contribution to the diversity of culture and tradition on this island.