ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, mARY MCALEESE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE Lunch
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE LUNCH HOSTED BY THE AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER
Prime Minister and Mrs Howard, Federal Opposition Leader and Mrs Beazley, Ministers, Members of Parliament, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am grateful for the warm welcome and wonderful hospitality which you have so kindly and graciously extended to me in this truly magnificent Parliament House. Here you have created a people’s house at the heart of your democracy which symbolises so much of the openness and grandeur as well as of the richness and genius of this bountiful country and its fortunate society - generous in outlook and humanitarian in spirit. And even here in this Great Hall there is something of the genius of the Irish contribution to Australia - dominated as we are by the majestic tapestry based on the work of the gifted Arthur Boyd whose ancestors came from County Kerry - a beautiful part of Ireland - and travelled across the tyranny of distance to make their home in Australia.
Indeed when I met him in Dublin, last February, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told me that it was entirely proper that he should have been the first Foreign Minister I received following my election as President since, as he said, “Australia is the most Irish country in the world outside Ireland itself”. While I know one should never doubt the words of any distinguished Foreign Minister, I have to say that I did not realise how true those words were until I came here.
History has forged a special bond of friendship and the closest ties of kinship between Australia and Ireland. Our story is one which stretches over two hundred years and more - and is still unfolding. In those early days it was often a story of harshness and sadness, of transportations and fractured family relationships. The great majority of those who came would never again see the green fields of their homeland. But even in those earlier days their story would also be one of courage and triumph, of adventure and of nation building. They spread across urban and rural Australia. They worked on the roads and the railways and they planted the land. They founded schools and colleges, churches and hospitals. Indeed out of all the trials and challenges of those early days there would eventually be forged a new Federation of States - the centenary of which you will celebrate in 2001 - which has now achieved its own respected and valued place in the international family of nations as one of the most prosperous and progressive democracies on the face of the earth. Here in Parliament House - where so many names have such a familiar sound - we honour their contribution to public life and rejoice that there were among them those who became statesmen - in their time - in the service of Australia.
In his remarkable novel “Conversations at Curlow Creek”, David Malouf - the winner of the 1996 International Impac Dublin Literary Award - tells of the story of two Irishmen, one a prisoner and the other his jailer, as they look out across the rugged and untamed plains in those early days and see “a place that was still being made habitable. A venture, another example of the inextinguishable will of men and women to make room for themselves, on some patch of the earth, however small, where they could stand up, feel the ground under their feet and say, this is mine, I have made it mine. A place where a family could come to table and pass from hand to hand dishes with food ... that they had made the land yield up to them”. That was an Australia which held the promise of sufficient and the prospect of plenty. They were a people without power or privilege but their determination and spirit helped to make Australia the distinctive, prosperous, tolerant and respected country you have achieved today.
Ireland has also changed dramatically over those two hundred years. Today I am privileged to be the President of a society with the youngest population in the European Union, proud of its heritage and looking with confidence to the future on the eve of the Third Millennium. That confidence in the opportunities of the future has always been a characteristic of the Irish - even in the darkest moments of our history. It has challenged our best efforts - it has drawn us to a common cause. More recently it has drawn us to re-embrace our European vocation and to contribute of our talents and energies to the construction of the European Union, the world’s most ambitious cooperative adventure and political achievement in the second half of the twentieth century.
Our membership of the European Union has affected virtually every aspect of our national life. In a most significant and substantial way it has helped transform our economy. Today we have one of the fastest growing economies in the developed world. An accumulated growth rate of some 40% over the last five years and a decline in unemployment by some 50% over the last decade have given us a new confidence in ourselves and a sense of pride in our achievements as a nation. That confidence has also been evident in our cultural and artistic life, in the vitality and spirit of a new generation of Irish musicians and dancers, poets and authors, dramatists and actors, who have made a striking impact on the world stage.
Membership of the European Union has also raised our sights beyond the confines of our own State and has given us a stronger voice and a global perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing the international family. In this context I should add that we warmly welcome the new impetus in the relationship between the European Union and Australia and, in particular, the signature, in June last year, of the Joint Declaration on Relations. While the European Union is already Australia’s largest trading partner and source of foreign direct investment there are always new areas for further dynamic cooperation as exemplified by the recent signature of the Mutual Recognition Agreement and by the range of other important issues which are under discussion – each of them signs of a vibrant and meaningful partnership – and one which will layer up many benefits for the people of Australia and of Europe.
In our own bilateral business relationship, I am glad to know that new opportunities are being constantly explored. The overall value of our trade increased by some 60% last year and Australia is our sixth most important trading partner outside the European Union. Investment in both directions continues to expand. Many major Australian companies have realised the benefits of locating their European operations in Ireland - with access to a market of over 350 million people - while an increasing number of Irish companies are establishing across Australia and some of them seizing opportunities to undertake joint ventures and marketing opportunities with their Australian colleagues across the Asia Pacific Region.
Prime Minister, Distinguished Guests,
There is a saying in the Irish language - the language of the longest unbroken literary tradition in Europe north of the Alps - “is ar scath a cheile a mharainn na ndaoine” - which in translation means - “we all live in one anothers shadow”. The founding fathers of what is now the European Union grasped the essential meaning of that saying and set themselves the goal of creating a Europe where variety would be strength and not an encumbrance and where differences would not be denied but rather embraced and accommodated. They wanted a society where neighbours, one of whom is German and another French, one of whom considered himself or herself to be British, Irish and European and the other who considered himself or herself to be simply Irish and European, could together chart a common destiny. The founding fathers of Europe knew with appalling clarity what happens when nations engaged each other in conflict and they passionately believed that partnership was the only true security. The only path to sustained peace.
The European ideal provides us with a means of seeing our neighbours as part of a pluralistic society, which celebrates both differences and similarities within a shared European home. It is an ideal which has been vital for Ireland because it represents a process of healing deep divisions and suspicions, because it represents a process of change and transformation, and because it represents a process of accommodation and progress.
What happened in Belfast - the city where I was born - on Good Friday of this year has the same potential for life on the island of Ireland as the courageous Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 achieved for the continent of Europe. After thirty years of conflict and pain a group of remarkable women and men forged the basis for a settlement that carries - as the Irish Foreign Minister, David Andrews remarked - “the potential for an enormous empowerment”. It established the fact that with goodwill people can overcome the harsh legacy of history, that the future can be different and that negotiation and dialogue, based on the principles of consent and inclusiveness, can set the course to an altogether better, more prosperous and peaceful way of life.
The Good Friday Agreement was the culmination of some two years of intensive and detailed negotiations to bring enduring peace and prosperity to all those living on the island of Ireland. The many tragedies of a long and often painful history stood in the background - while in the foreground stood the fact that there was scarcely a family in Northern Ireland who had not been affected, in one way or another, by thirty years of conflict. Just two short weeks before I left for Australia I made the sad journey to Omagh in Northern Ireland to reach towards those whose lives had been shattered by the harrowing grief of yet another outrage.
The horror and devastation of Omagh was yet another poignant reminder that the legitimate demand for peace does not by itself establish its reality. And yet it was a harrowing experience when those who longed for peace said so - eloquently and tearfully - and when the Irish and British Governments again united in their determination not to be deflected from the courageous path of reconciliation. Peace does not happen - it has to be achieved. There is no inevitable march of history - indeed the ideology that believed in that inevitability faced its own demise with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Those who courageously engaged in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement accepted that view and gave priority to the search for accommodation over the promotion of differing aspirations. But there was one aspiration which united them - it was the aspiration to achieve peace - it was the prospect of an honourable settlement to which the leadership of both communities could give their assent. It was that prospect which encouraged the negotiators to work towards a future based on the acceptance of diversity and on the principles of mutual respect, parity of esteem and genuine partnership.
It should be clearly acknowledged, and I am glad to do so today in the heart of your democracy, that the support and understanding of the international community, symbolised by the independent chairmanship of Senator Mitchell, Prime Minister Holkeri and General de Chastelain, was vital to the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement. The direct roles played by the President of the United States, who has just concluded another journey of encouragement and support across Ireland, and by our partners in the European Union were essential. So also was the sympathetic assistance provided by those countries where over the decades and across the generations the Irish came to build their futures anew. Pre-eminent among those countries is Australia. Prime Minister, your interest and the generous support to the International Fund for Ireland by your Government and by its predecessor led by Paul Keating are enormously valued - as indeed was the work of the distinguished and learned Australian Sir Ninian Stephen in the early 1990's. The voices of those who cared in Australia, who so often helped to give us in Ireland our voice - all have played a vital role in the work for peace and in the promotion of reconciliation.
But ultimately no words - however noble - written on a page will of themselves lead to peace. Demanding challenges lie ahead. But there is now - I firmly believe - the confidence and the overwhelming political will to ensure that those words finalised on Good Friday will become a reality. We will have a genuine peace in Ireland. We will build it on acceptance and by consent, on multiple allegiances and on mutual respect. Peace may, as Yeats said, come dropping slow - but it will come. It will come as it has come across Europe by building confidence and trust - and by building structures of co-dependence and intimate cooperation.
Prime Minister and fellow guests.
We live on two islands of somewhat different magnitudes. We are situated in very different parts of the world. In Ireland we have rediscovered our European destiny and you have built successful and important relationships across the Asia Pacific Region. And yet, as I have learned over the last eight days, our relationship has not been diminished by time or by distance. The vast number of Australians who are proud to claim an Irish heritage; our vibrant trade and investment links; the dramatic increase in tourism in both directions; the successful working holiday scheme as well as the numerous scholarships and academic links, all reinforce the bonds between our countries and our peoples. Across this land in Governments and Parliaments, in Universities and business associations, in Irish clubs and associations, I have found enormous goodwill, genuine interest and deep understanding. As two relatively young States committed to playing our part in the world and anxious to have it embrace our democratic ideals, we share a strong humanitarian outlook, and we both cherish the objectives of peace, justice and understanding between nations. In every respect - geography apart - we are as close as we have ever been.
Prime Minister,
As I leave this place let me assure you that I will take back with me to Ireland not only a feeling of great pride in the Irish contribution to Australia but the hope that I will have left with you and with all whom I have met a clear understanding that Australia and its wonderful people will always have a special place in Irish hearts.
Thank you for the warmth of your welcome, for the generosity of your hospitality and for the wonderful arrangements made for this State Visit