BRIEF REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRAL OF MEMBERSHIP BY THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY
BRIEF REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRAL OF MEMBERSHIP BY THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY MONDAY, 24TH MAY 1999
Is mór an pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh tráthnóna. Míle bhuíochas as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as an onóir mhór seo.
I am delighted to be here with you this evening and I deeply appreciate the honour of being invited to become a member of the Royal Irish Academy. I would especially like to thank the President of the Academy, Professor David Spearman, my sponsor, Professor Proinsias McAnna and all the Members of the Academy for bestowing this honour on me.
I am deeply conscious of the long and venerable history of the Academy, and the way in which it has fostered a respect for knowledge and learning, as well as the preservation and protection of our national treasures, over the past two hundred years and more. Most importantly, I commend you on the way your work has changed and evolved with the passing of years, remaining at the cutting edge of research and scholarship right up to the present day. Through your research grants, conferences, National Committees and publications, you have achieved a tremendous amount and done a great service for the people of Ireland. You have been a crucial reminder in a world of instant sound bites, hurried unreflective analysis, of the value of scholarship, of painstaking, time-consuming research, of the need to understand the beginning as well as the middle, if we are to be on course for a sensible end! It is a contribution which does not always receive the acclaim and thanks it deserves. Its subtlety, its patient acceptance of long timelines rather than the tyranny of deadlines, make your work so often the stuff which will not catch the headline or create a whirlwind. Yet it weaves the warp, the weft of human insight, of the relationship between ancient history and modern science, the ties that bind a civilisation’s body of knowledge and ensure the pursuit of knowledge is respected, protected, advanced, no matter what the exigences of the day. So this evening, on behalf of the Irish people, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you.
Mo bhuíochas libh arís as ucht an onóir seo a bhronnadh orm. Guím rath agus séan ar bhur gcuid oibre san am atá le teacht.