ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER TALLINN, ESTONIA
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER TALLINN, ESTONIA THURSDAY, 24TH MAY, 2001
Mr President, Mrs Meri, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, head ohtust {good evening}
It is a singular honour for me to be here this evening as President of Ireland on this the first State Visit between our two countries. This exchange between our peoples, who have traced similar histories on the map of time, was long overdue and will, of course be shortly followed up with another visit – this time by our Soccer team.
This magnificent building, in which you are so kindly hosting this occasion, is a most remarkable example of Renaissance architecture and a great treasure for the city. I have heard that it was rebuilt in the 16th century by an ancient organisation, the Tallinn Brotherhood of Blackheads, and that in the 18th and 19th centuries, “the most respectable guests of the town were received in the House of the Blackheads”. It is a great relief to me to know that we are indeed regarded as respectable guests and it is a joy to be woven so deeply into Estonia’s and Tallin’s long tradition of hospitality.
We, Mr President, represent two ancient nations and two modern independent states. The peoples of Estonia and Ireland only saw the dawn of the freedom associated with democratic statehood during the last century. For Ireland it was a violent and painful birth, the scars of which have been a long time healing. For your people too it has been a deeply traumatic and recent journey, with democracy and independence being suppressed several times before Estonia took its rightful place in the Europe of free nations in 1991. Our store of separate and tragic memories gives us a deep empathy and a spontaneous insight into each other’s heart and soul. But thankfully we meet today in very different times, as a privileged generation whose countries respective fortunes have emerged from dark shadows, a generation which has not only a chance to shine in freedom but is shining brilliantly in a way which vindicates all the pain, all the sacrifice of the past.
Your own life Mr President, epitomises that pain and sacrifice and mirrors your people’s successful struggle to transcend the legacy of injustice. You have nothing to learn about the tragedy of family separation, exile and isolation. It is a familiar story to many of your Estonian brothers and sisters. Your personal resilience, inventiveness and determination are legendary and of course are very particular to you, and yet they too reflect your nation’s struggle - a struggle not for some narrow, negative nationalism, but for true democratic self-determination. So, Mr President, when I salute you this evening as the representative of all the people of Estonia, it is with the utmost respect and admiration for both your own personal triumph over adversity, and the triumph of the people of Estonia.
Thirty years ago, Ireland was a nation in a quandary about its future. We were not then members of the European Community but the debate about membership had provoked much soul searching about the best way forward. We decided to join and today with the benefit of hindsight we can say we made a good choice, for membership has contributed in no small measure to our considerable success in economic, social, political and cultural terms over the past decade.
Now candidate states such as Estonia and the current members of the European Union find themselves at one of those rare, key moments in the history of our continent, when we literally shift from one era into another. We are on the verge of moving to a much larger, more influential and more culturally diverse Union. Ireland has a particularly positive view of the next phase of enlargement for we welcome the new economic, political and cultural dynamic that applicant countries will bring to the Union.
There remains much work to be done and difficult issues to be negotiated, but we believe there are no insurmountable obstacles to the successful and harmonious enlargement of the Union and we look forward to welcoming our new partners within the family of friendly nations that is the European Union.
Ireland entered the Union as a poor country, with endemic problems of high emigration and high unemployment. Today we are regarded as one of the Union’s outstanding success stories and indeed the magnitude of Ireland’s economic success over the past decade, illustrates the opportunities that exist for other small, flexible economies within the Union. To give just a few examples: Ireland has had the fastest growth in the OECD for the past six years; total employment has risen from just over a million in the 1980's to approximately 1.7 million today - that is an increase of 70% - and unemployment has fallen from 17% in the mid 1980s to under 4% today; Ireland has overtaken the U.S. to be the world’s leading exporter of computer software; and our standard of living has risen from about 60% of EU average in 1973 to be well above that average today.
But there is a success story too outside the catalogue of economic statistics. We are a small country but through membership of the EU we have been given the means and opportunity to extend our sphere of influence far beyond our own shores, contributing effectively to the evolution of the Union and its policies, never afraid to articulate our own case and press it hard and at the same time committed to the overall well-being of the Union and its individual members. Through our membership we sat side by side, as equals, with our neighbours from the United Kingdom with whom we have had historically fraught relationships but with whom today we share a collegial and relaxed friendship, which has been crucial to the necessary conditions for peace in Northern Ireland.
The maturing of our relationship with the United Kingdom is particularly instructive because one of the fears which was commonly expressed before we joined the then Common Market was a real concern that our national cultures and traditions, our very particularity would be overwhelmed. Our experience has in fact been quite the opposite. The European Union has provided us with a platform on which we could showcase to a huge audience what it is to be Irish. Not only did it energise us economically and politically but it galvanised us socially and culturally with a new found self-respect and self-confidence. Our cultural life has experienced tremendous freshness and vibrancy as the genius of a highly educated and assertive generation, comfortably Irish, comfortably European, floods unimpeded through every area of the arts. Moreover we have become re-acquainted with our ancient historic roots as Europeans, our shared Celtic origins, our common Christian heritage, our outreach to Europe through our people who left Ireland because of poverty or politics generation after generation and who made their mark all over this great diverse continent, as well as across the United States of America. Today, our ancient links to both continents have been renewed and refreshed as a result of our membership of the EU. Indeed, Ireland has now become something of a bridge between Europe and the United States, comfortably at home with both, yet with its own unique identity.
Like Ireland, Estonia has strong literary and musical traditions which played a significant role in your national independence movement of the late nineteenth century. Indeed music was also to contribute dramatically to your recent liberation. That indomitable culture, which transcended adversity is quintessentially European and an undeniably intrinsic part of our common European heritage inside or outside the European Union. However in the diversity that is the European Union there are opportunities to find new audiences, to generate a wide realm of interest, to know the joy of pride as strangers fall under your spell to become, in the words of your poet Marie Under “an earthly life” burning “ in a myriad of splendours.”
This afternoon, Mr President, I had the privilege of being conferred with the Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Marina. You also graciously conferred the Order of the Cross of Terra Marina on my husband Martin. We both warmly thank you, and the people of Estonia, for these highest honours, which we accept with great pride and gratitude on behalf of the people of Ireland. We have now been woven in a very beautiful way into the story of modern, 21st century Estonia.
I hope that out of this visit will come a store of shared memories which will enhance and deepen the bonds of friendship between the Irish and the Estonian peoples. One of our best loved poets John Hewitt has written that “ we build to fill the centuries arrears”. History has conspired to keep the Irish and the Estonians so busy that we have not had enough time to get to know each other as well as we should - until now. Now we have a chance to build a century of happier memories, a century of hope and to build it together.
I look forward with confidence to that future. And in that spirit, I ask our guests to rise as I propose a toast to Estonia and to you, Mr President and to Mrs Meri.