ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY MCALEESE AT THE LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL, THURSDAY, 19 FEB
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY MCALEESE AT THE LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL, THURSDAY, 19 FEBRUARY, 2004
A chairde. Tá an-áthas bheith i bhúr measc inniu. Míle buíochas libh as an fáilte a thug sibh dom agus do mo fear chéile Mairtín.
I am very honoured to be invited by the Dean, Professor Laura D’Andrea Tyson, to address such a distinguished group of business people and students of the London Business School, the graduate school of business of the University of London.
The word “business”, I believe, comes from an Old English word ‘Bisignis’ meaning anxiety. Facing the cream of the business world as I do here, I hope the prospect of hearing me speak is not increasing anyone’s anxiety unreasonably at least not to the same level that facing you induces in me.
At its simplest, business consists of making connections and cultivating friendships for commercial reasons. It comes as no surprise therefore that the business community has been to the forefront in forging and expanding the network of relationships which link our two countries. In doing so, they have invested much of their time and creative talents to this enterprise, and their efforts have paid dividends, not just in the area of commercial success, but also very importantly, in helping to break down barriers to a greater mutual understanding and friendship between our peoples. This change was confirmed only last week in a new report on Irish attitudes to our nearest neighbours, which was commissioned by the British Council and the British Embassy in Dublin. A new mood is transforming those attitudes - old negativities, old resentments, old stereotypes are passing into history as two governments, two peoples assert their growing friendship and their partnership in pursuit of peace.
I am happy to say that the example set by the business community has been taken up in many other strands of our relationship; in the arts and culture, education, research, sport, and social and community contacts. The cumulative effect is a rich and expanding network of contacts and relations between our two peoples which reflects a fuller appreciation of our common as well as our diverse traditions. I want therefore to express my appreciation to all of the business people on both of these islands who have played, and continue to play, a vital and constructive role in improving British-Irish contacts, and thereby contributing to a climate of better understanding and co-operation which lies at the heart of the progress made towards a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
Ireland’s recent economic success and new-found prosperity has not only done much to transform attitudes to the Irish people, it has also fostered in us a new attitude towards ourselves, and a resounding new confidence about Ireland’s future. This is a welcome break with the past. At the time of independence, Ireland was a very poor and predominantly rural economy. Our relationship with Britain was one of economic dependence, operating in the shadow of a larger and stronger world economy. It was a far from simple relationship but rather one skewed and twisted by forces of history which made one the coloniser and the other the colonised. The psychological scars were deep and very damaging. For generation after generation our biggest export was our people who travelled in huge numbers to America, Canada, Australia and of course to Britain, to become, initially, the cheap labour source which built up infrastructure, built up prosperity and opportunity in other lands. The effect on the self-image and confidence of many Irish people was corrosive but nothing is immutable. History moves on.
Today Ireland is a very different place. Now it is the success story par excellence of the European Union. Economic progress and development over the past ten to fifteen years have been nothing short of extraordinary, culminating in our position as one of the fastest growing economies in the industrialised world. Even with the current global economic slowdown, our projected growth in the medium term will still be well ahead of other OECD economies.
The profile of the economy has also changed. We now have a high technology, export - led industrial and services economy and while Britain remains a very important market to us today, Ireland is now one of the most open globalised market economies in the world. There has been the very welcome recent trend of thousands of returning emigrants, many with valuable business and technology expertise whose new view of Ireland as a land of opportunity has turned us into a country of net inward migration for the first time in a century and a half.
A complex of interacting forces and factors lie at the heart of Ireland’s success - from timely investment in education, to social partnership, from membership of the European Union to the peace process, from a benign corporation tax regime to the growth of direct foreign investment and the parallel evolution of a strong indigenous enterprise sector.
Today Ireland’s economic relationship with Britain, like its political relationship, is one of much healthier balance and much greater variety. We are a very fortunate generation to be living through these times of great and good change, for there is a new-found friendship, respect and equilibrium in our relationships which should make us both proud and hopeful for the future. After all the UK is still Ireland’s largest export market and Ireland is, on a per capita basis, the U.K’s largest export market. Our futures are intertwined and we have a profound vested interest in each other’s continued prosperity and wellbeing. When we take the trouble to unravel a few of the salient statistics, we can see just how intertwined our futures really are. There are over 200 British companies in the manufacturing and service sectors supported by the IDA in Ireland, employing nearly 19,000 people, in addition to those employed in major British retail outlets operating in Ireland. This investment may attract fewer headlines than the major IT and pharmaceutical companies that make up a large part of US investment in Ireland, but it is a very important and much valued support to the Irish economy and I would like to take this opportunity to highlight and express gratitude for the major role played by British investment in Ireland and its crucial contribution to our overall economic development.
I am particularly proud to say that in recent years investment between Britain and Ireland has increasingly become two-way and Irish inward investment to the UK is now a very significant factor in Britain’s economic wellbeing.
In this setting where education is the key business and vocation it seems appropriate that I should address another of the key factors which has transformed Ireland’s fortunes and its future - that is our investment in our people. Despite difficult economic circumstances, successive governments from the 1960’s onward had the foresight to invest heavily in education, particularly at second and third level and with a particular focus on science and technology. We had missed the first industrial revolution by a long Irish mile and this was our opportunity to make sure we did not miss the second one coming down the line. The strategy was decisive to our economic recovery. Our population – one of the youngest in Europe – is highly educated, flexible, responsive and creative. The statistics speak for themselves. The percentage level of total public expenditure on education in Ireland is one of the highest in Europe. Over the past ten years the number of full time students in third level education has increased by almost 80%, while the number of full time students in technological institutions has more than doubled. Half the Irish workforce has now experienced third-level education. And 60% of Ireland’s third level students major in engineering, science or business studies.
Science and technology are at the heart of developments at second and third level education. The Science Foundation Ireland programme is contributing to raising the level of research capabilities and skills in Irish universities in partnership with international business and with world-leading centres of research excellence. Our aim is to become world leaders in areas of life science and medical technology, software and a range of value added services. We are building for a future we know will benefit both these islands. Irish companies are now major investors in the United States, in the European Union, in the accession states and in the Asia Pacific region where on a recent visit to China I saw very clearly the huge potential for countries such as Ireland to benefit from closer contacts and greater economic collaboration.
In these months during which Ireland holds the Presidency of the European Union, it is also timely and appropriate to credit the impact of our now thirty year membership of the Union. It undoubtedly brought tests, disciplines and challenges - very familiar to today’s acceding countries - but it also provided the opportunity and incentive for the modernisation and transformation of our economy and our society. Our relative smallness, our peripherality, have not stood in the way of an active and committed membership from which Ireland has manifestly benefited and through which we have made a valuable contribution to the greater good of Europe and to the wider international community. These experiences give great inspiration and hope to the accession states many of whom have endured considerable hardship on the journey that brings them to the door of welcomes on May 1st. I know from my visits to them that they see Ireland as a model of how a small state can benefit from membership of the Union, make a significant and constructive contribution to its development, and at the same time retain and express confidently its own sense of national identity.
Never in human history has there been such a miraculous undertaking, with such noble intent and such shared ambition. The new member states accession will put behind us the final miserable chapter of twentieth century European history and provide to ourselves and the world a showcase of healing, of collegiality and of hope. This great adventure in consensus is rooted in a belief that we are in the process of revealing to ourselves the truest potential of the individual because that potential is only revealed by working together. It is wasted and masked by violence and also by indifference or by overlooking each other’s unique talents and charisms. It is in that life enhancing context, where people matter, human rights matter, equality matters and peace matters, that the Union presents hard business opportunities to be translated into enterprise, into jobs, into sales and into prosperity for the many and not just for the privileged few as in the models of old.
There is plenty to test the flair and imagination of a new generation of business leaders. But I hope our ambition takes us further still for in a world where the vast majority of our brothers and sisters waken up to inhuman poverty and neglect, the story of Ireland brings a little hope-: a first world country with a third world memory, and a restless conscience to help us to be grateful for these times, these opportunities and to be impatient to see them distributed widely across our common global homeland. Only then will the anxiety at the heart of business and at the heart of humankind disappear –only then will our world’s best day be revealed.
Thank you very much.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.