Christmas Message from President Mary McAleese, 2009
Christmas Message from President Mary McAleese, 2009
Warmest Christmas and New Year greetings to everyone here in Ireland and to our Irish family and friends who are scattered all over the world. Christmas is a time of gathering for family and community celebrations and though 2009 was a year that sorely tested many people, it was surely a year when community triumphed. Towards the end of the year, Ireland saw flooding on an unprecedented scale take its savage toll on homes, farms and businesses and many families are still coping with loss and displacement. Yet we also saw a flood of a different kind, a flood of spontaneous help, generosity and good neighbourliness that brought much needed support and hope to those who were close to despair.
2009 was also a year when the floodgates of suppressed truth opened for adults whose childhoods had been damaged by abuse. Patrick Kavanagh’s poem To A Child says - “Child there is a light somewhere/ Under a star/ Sometime it will be for you/ a window that looks/ inward to God.” Two major reports opened Ireland up to unpalatable facts about trusted institutions of Church and State which put children’s welfare low on their scale of priority. Once again the community gathered in solidarity around those hurt and wounded and registered a determination that the future will be very different.
The economic shocks of 2009 brought job loss and money worries to a lot of homes as well as a pervasive malaise. Historically high numbers of people have turned for help to community based organisations and charities. Here too we have seen the character and resilience of our people express itself in the huge increase in volunteering reported by community organisations and in the response of the public to pleas for financial aid for those in need.
In the coming New Year we have the opportunity to renew our country by our efforts as individuals and as community to one another so that as Kavanagh says in his poem Hope, “April will dance in our heart’s ballroom/ We shall survive/ hope will sustain.”
The precious gift of peace once thought to be an impossible dream is quietly growing and changing the face of this island, radiating a powerful message of possibility to the many parts of the world where conflict wasted lives so needlessly. The prosperity of the Celtic Tiger years has also left its mark, some of it dreadfully chastening but much of it essentially good for it transformed Ireland into a high-achieving, ambitious and confident nation. Now it is our task to consolidate the peace and restore a sustainable, sensible prosperity. That work which is the job of all of us will, in time, bring a welcome flood-tide of good to our people. That is our hope and our prayer for the coming year. May it be for each one of you a year that surprises in ways that lift the heart and the hopes.