Ireland and Mexico: Partners in Opening Gateways to Real and Sustainable Growth for the Twenty-First Century, Address by President Higgins
Guadalajara, Mexico City, 22nd October 2013
[Distinguido Ministro de ….
Distinguido Gobernador del Estado de Jalisco,
Distinguido Licenciado Miguel Aleman Velasco,
Distinguido Alcalde de Guadalajara,
Distinguidos Diputados, Senadores y Embajadores,
Estimados amigos de la comunidad empresarial irlandesa en Guadalajara,
Señoras y Señores,]
Es un gran placer para mí presentarme en este prestigioso encuentro y tener la oportunidad de brindar mi aporte a sus debates y reflexiones.
Con gran sorpresa me enteré de que soy el primer Jefe de Estado o Gobierno europeo en funciones que se ha dirigido a la Cumbre de Negocios en sus once años de existencia.
A través de los años, la Cumbre ha escuchado las palabras de distinguidos líderes de todo el continente americano. Me complace poder ser una pequeña pieza de la historia y seguir el camino trazado por muchos de mis colegas de este lado del Atlántico frente a este importante foro.
[I am delighted to be here with you for this prestigious gathering and to have the opportunity today to contribute to your discussions and reflections.
It was with some surprise that I learnt that I am the first serving European Head of State or Government ever to address the Cumbre de Negocios in its eleven years of existence.
The Cumbre has been honoured over the years to hear from distinguished leaders from across the continent of the Americas; I am very glad to be able to make a small piece of history by following the path of many of my colleagues from this side of the Atlantic in addressing this important forum.]
I should say at the outset that I come to this conversation with a strong sense that Ireland and the world have much to learn from Mexico and from other countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Last year I had the opportunity for reflection on this theme when I addressed the EU-CEPAL High Level Seminar on Investment for Sustainable Development in Santiago de Chile.
On that occasion I offered a consideration of the economic crisis; of what, in dealing with it, had worked and not worked; of the variety of possible responses to this crisis; and of the emergence of a new thinking on the connections between society, the economy, economic policy and economic theory. I stressed the value of the originality I saw in the younger Latin American economists’ writing on achieving growth that delivered both sustainability and poverty reduction.
In particular, I reflected on how the Latin American and Caribbean region had continued to develop and progress in the face of the global economic and financial crisis, and what we, not only in Ireland, but as a European Union could learn from countries, like Mexico, who were continuing to register positive economic growth and, at the same time, prioritizing social inclusion and increased well-being for their people, ending the misery of extreme poverty for many, and enabling many more to participate in the economy through employment creation.
The global financial crisis has disrupted economies, and people’s lives, across the world. It has hastened the realisation in Europe, in the US and elsewhere, that global economic rebalancing, so long foretold, has happened, continues to evolve and that our thinking and critical analysis, our policy formation, also needs to adapt and consider different, alternative models of growth and development. We need to be able, at academic level, to teach in a way that not only allows pluralism of models but gives us policy choices driven by our real economies; policies that protect our citizens from the consequences of reckless speculative movements in economies, that have rightly been labelled ‘fictive’ versions of the economy.
Your region, in prioritizing poverty reduction, while at the same time attracting quality investment and sustainable, inclusive development, can be a major contributor to the search for new economic paradigms as we seek the best way to move forward from the failures of the past.
Agenda-setting conversations as to what is achievable, necessary and developmental, can no longer play out in small, hermetically-sealed groups of elites from just one or two parts of the world. We need to talk to, and listen to, each other. I know that in Mexico, the Pacto por Mexico opens with the clear statement: ‘México tiene una sociedad plural.’
I would echo – and amplify – this by pointing out that ‘el mundo es una sociedad plural.’ If group-think, premised on the false suggestion of a single inevitable path of growth based on virtual products rather than real economic value was one cause of the financial crisis, worldwide and indeed in Ireland, then this rebalancing – not just of the global economy, but of the wider global conversation – is a welcome and a necessary correction.
Señoras y Señores,
Ireland has experienced the consequences of economic reversal painfully and directly – flowing simultaneously from the global financial and economic crisis, over which we had little control, and from the destructive fallout from the collapse of a domestic construction and banking bubble.
2013 marks the sixth year of a painful rebalancing of our national economy – a rebalancing that has deeply affected ordinary Irish citizens, families and businesses. We have been burdened with unemployment and debt levels that mean that there is no easy short-term solution to dealing with the legacy of the crisis.
But we are emerging from this situation, steadily, with determination, and with a much deeper appreciation of the dynamics of the global economy that we must navigate. We are also resolved not to waste the chastening experience of a recession and to learn the positive lessons for the future. The resilience and creativity of our people have been called upon, and we are determined to build on that creativity, innovation, high level of education, and openness to new models. We will not waste our energies on seeking to relive that which has failed. Invention rather than imitation has been our strength, be it in James Joyce’s Ulysses or in the new micro chip from Intel, in Co. Kildare. Both go out as Irish around the world.
As a small country, on the periphery of Europe, our future lies not in returning to the failed economic path of reckless speculation and bubble economics, but to a sustainable model of nurturing talented people, creating valuable goods and services, innovating and connecting to global partners, customers, and investors in enduring ways.
It is the difference between pursuing opportunism and embracing opportunity –between the illusion of a virtual economy and the sustainability of a real economy. Ireland has returned to economic stability and to modest growth. We are the country in Europe with the youngest and one of the most highly educated populations. We are outward-looking, and our exports, including those from an expanding indigenous sector, now at record levels – exceeding the peaks they reached before the economic crisis. Our exporters are reaching new markets, well beyond our traditional customers in the UK, Europe and the US. Irish exports to Mexico increased by 24% in 2012 and have continued to perform well above most of our other markets throughout 2013.
Our companies, our educational institutions, many of whom are with me here in Mexico, are very anxious to secure new opportunities, new partners, new ideas, new frontiers.
I visited Mexico, and indeed Guadalajara, for the first time in the Spring of 1967 when I was a post-graduate student at Indiana University. Where some of my fellow students were heading for Fort Lauderdale, I was brought by Mexican friends Roberto Barnstone and Ricardo de Anda to Mexico.
Mexico represents one of the most important new frontiers for Irish businesses and one of the most welcome grounds for new partners. Here in Guadalajara, we are proud to have a small but vibrant community of Irish business, in sectors ranging from manufacturing to financial services to clean tech to electronics.
I know that many of our Guadalajara-based Irish business people are in the audience today. I want to recognise your contribution to creating prosperity and high quality employment in Mexico. We are proud of your achievements and we hope that you will act as mentors to the new Irish businesses entering Mexico in the years ahead.
Ireland’s progress in exiting from fiscal and economic crisis is driven by, and will continue to rely heavily on, a dynamic and innovative export sector.
But our economic future in Ireland must also be underpinned by our continued ability to attract high quality investment. It pleases us that those who have chosen to locate in Ireland are staying, conducting research and development, and expanding.
Seventy internationally renowned companies established or expanded their operations in Ireland in the first half of this year alone. Companies such as Ebay, Twitter, Pfizer, Yahoo and Huawei all grew their existing operations in Ireland over the last nine months, including, crucially, through investment in significant new Research and Development activities.
So, I am pleased to report that through a period of unprecedented economic upheaval, Ireland continues to perform very well as a base for international companies doing business in Europe and the wider world. Last year, international companies in Ireland created more net new jobs than they had in ten years. Those companies continue to find what they need in Ireland – talented, educated and innovative people in an English-speaking country in the Eurozone with a clear, transparent and effective regulatory environment.
I said earlier that our experience of economic crisis has honed our understanding of the dynamics of the new global economy.
We are proud that Ireland remains a leading recipient of investment from the US and Europe. We value enormously our relationship with our traditional partners. But we keenly recognise too that we need to attract new investment from new partners. We want to place, alongside the investment from those US, European and Asian companies, investment by Mexican companies.
Ireland offers enormous potential to Mexican companies as a gateway to the European market. We want to work with Mexico in a way that is mutually beneficial, to attract more of your companies to Ireland. Some of Ireland’s most dynamic and innovative companies have already invested in the Mexican market and are steadily growing their presence and their impact. We want this relationship to be reciprocated.
For that reason, the City of Dublin will host a two-day seminar in May next year, specifically targeted at increasing Mexican investment in Dublin and Ireland more generally. I know that our Embassy here in Mexico, as well as your Embassy in Dublin, have been working hard on deepening the investment relationship and will in the next few months be following up with many of you present here today to encourage you to explore these opportunities.
The investment decision may be an outcome of calculation, but it is also a relationship between individuals and peoples, based on trust, ethics and mutuality. The personal chemistry in all of these areas between Irish people and Mexican people is very good.
Señoras y Señores,
I have spoken in some detail about Ireland as a gateway to Europe. Let me take a moment to reflect on the wider European project and the EU-Mexico relationship.
Being in this extraordinarily vibrant country, I see how Mexico is simultaneously turning its political, economic and diplomatic face south towards its Latin American partners through its engagement in CELAC and the Pacific Alliance; north towards its powerful and historic partners of the US and Canada; and east across the Pacific towards exciting and fast-growing countries in Asia. However, let us pause for a moment and recall the importance of the European Union as a major partner for Mexico and the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole.
The relationship between Mexico and the European Union is one of shared history and memory that tries to accommodate differing narratives with respect and even forgiveness; the legacy is one of a common language, culture and values, at the heart of which today lies a deep understanding of the global challenges we must all face together, and which we can only overcome if we all work together.
I know too that in Mexico in recent years the word ‘Europe’ has in some accounts, particularly certain financial accounts, often been linked with the word ‘crisis’. Many of you gathered here this afternoon have a personal appreciation of the impact of this economic uncertainty. You will also, I feel sure, have an appreciation of the harsh effects of the recession on the lives of many European citizens, the hard economic choices facing their elected representatives and the overall impact of this crisis on the self-confidence and credibility of the European Union.
Those of us in Europe who grew up with a vision of Europe, not only as a place beyond war but one that enjoyed a common freedom from insecurity, cannot take the legacy of the achievements of the founders of the European Union for granted. Our Union, in its founding treaties, is based on shared fundamental values – respect for personal dignity; freedom; democracy; equality; the rule of law and respect for human rights. We have before us the task of addressing the challenges that now face us in a way that recreates, for the twenty-first century, the vision and idealism of the European Union’s original post-war founders, a European Union of citizens within a global community of citizens. We have the responsibility to ensure that the interests of European citizens – the women and men who are dealing on a daily basis with the fall-out from the crisis – are at the centre of our institutional response; that responsibility also extends to our global community where, in partnership with our Latin American friends, we can seek to solve global challenges together.
I spoke earlier of a welcome and necessary rebalancing of the global economy and the wider global policy discourse. Within that process, the European project has much to contribute. The EU remains the greatest and most successful conflict resolution project ever undertaken, as well as the home of half a billion people and some of the most creative companies and higher education institutions in the world.
The project of European integration has brought enormous benefits for Ireland, for Europe and for the world. We in Ireland are working with our partners in the European Union to emerge from the severely testing time we have faced and to make changes that will underpin a safer, stronger, stable European financial system, a European economy of real growth which will again create employment for our people and a flourishing European society which promotes the participation of all its citizens.
The European Union continues to lead and to build partnerships with those, like Mexico, who share its values, not just in the economic sphere, but with regard to the global issues that confront us all today. As we look to the world post 2015, and seek to grapple with the enormous challenges of climate change, poverty and world hunger, Mexico and the European Union, already strategic partners in so many senses, can, together, achieve great things.
I know that discussions are now beginning on a formal upgrading of the Global Agreement between Mexico and the EU. These are vital discussions. We need each other as political, economic and development partners. Mexico and Europe together represent almost 30% of the global economy. Our shared history, shared culture and – vitally – shared values have a weight and an importance beyond economic measure.
Europe is rebuilding its economies and societies. Europe – and Ireland – are embracing the opportunity of playing a dynamic and creative role in a transformed global economy.
Half the population of Ireland is under 35 years of age. The economy in which our young people are beginning their working life is very different than five years ago, let alone ten. Their individual and communal worlds have been shaped by technology in a way unimaginable to previous generations.
Sometimes it seems that technology changes and advances so fast, we barely have time to assess the implications of one development before it is surpassed. But it is not a source of trepidation. It is a vista of opportunity.
At present, the Internet economy accounts for roughly 3% of Irish GDP and this is set to double to 6% over the next four years. In terms of jobs, the digital economy has become as big an industry in Ireland as Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing and it is growing about 10 times as fast as the economy as a whole.
Our challenge as leaders is to ensure that our rising generation is well placed to meet this opportunity. Yes, with the right technical skills but, even more important, with an academic formation that can direct and deal with change in a creative and ethical way. Mexico and Ireland share this challenge equally. President Peña Nieto, in his State of the Union address last month, emphasized that the job of government is not merely to administer but to transform. This transformation requires the technological applications of science be delivered throughout the entire economy, as a tool of commerce available to enterprises of all types and sizes
Currently, less than a quarter of small companies in Ireland are selling online, while 70% of what Irish consumers spend online is currently going out of Ireland. This has to change.
We are anxious to provide the widespread application of the crucial skills and the technical tools our workforce will require to find their place in this new digital economy. It is our intention in Ireland to lead Europe in terms of ICT graduates as a percentage of all third level graduates within five years. Our young people are increasingly choosing Science, Technology and Mathematics subjects in university – 21% more in 2012 than the year before.
I know that Mexico too is also keenly aware of this challenge and has set the ambitious goal of increasing investment in Science, Technology and Innovation to 1% of GDP by 2018. I have been hugely encouraged to watch the fast growing links between Mexican and Irish Universities over the last few years; five of our most respected Universities are accompanying me on my visit to Mexico and are working with Mexican third level partners in areas from nano-technology to sustainable water management to business administration to electronic engineering.
We seek to broaden and accelerate our academic and scientific links with Mexico in every subject. I would like that wonderful fruit of cooperation that characterised the working relationship between Octavio Paz and his fellow Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett to be replicated in every area of our lives together, students, scholars and scientists.
I am delighted to say that this very city in which we gather is ‘digitally twinned’ with our capital city of Dublin. Guadalajara’s project to be a thriving centre for the digital economy in Mexico has much in common with the Digital Hub project launched in Dublin 10 years ago. Our Embassy is working with ProMéxico to see how we can best leverage this relationship to intensify cooperation in the digital and creative industries in particular.
We are learning from each other. And it is from conversations like these that we can move from conceptions of the digital revolution as some modern gold-rush of competitive opportunism, to understanding it as the basis for a sustainable, interconnected and thriving future.
The implication of this is that we must be prepared to meet this opportunity with even more fundamental skills and aptitudes – for critical thinking, for creativity, for context. In a rush of change and information, those core abilities of reasoning, discernment and imagination become more important, not less.
This is also why it is so important for our society that our efforts to adapt to this new on-line world involves all of us and not just the young or the affluent. Research suggests that within a few years, only 1 job in 10 in Europe will not entail any digital skills. This, therefore, is not a sectoral issue, not an elite issue, not a narrow interest. It is an issue for our whole economy and our whole society. We cannot afford to respond to digital capacity by opening up new fissures of inequality at any level.
Our adaptation to the digital economy must be inclusive. The internet, and the democratisation of information that it brings, can be a revolutionary tool to promote transparency, fairness, accountability and active citizenship. If I can once again draw from the Pacto por México, I believe that the digital revolution can be a tool for achieving what the Pacto describes as “la democratización de la economía y la política …. y la ampliación y aplicación eficaz de los derechos sociales’” – the democratisation of the economy and politics and the broadening and effective application of social rights.
We must be about the creation of a new modernity – an ethical modernity; in creating this we must not see it as an automatic gift from the past. As Octavio Paz put it in his 1978 reflection in The Labyrinth of Solitude:
“I do not preach return to the past, imaginary as are all pasts, nor do I advocate that we go back into the clutches of a tradition that was strangling us. I believe that Mexico, like the other Latin-American countries, must find her own modernity. In a certain sense she must invent it. But she must start with the ways of living and dying, acquiring and spending, working and playing that our people has created. It is a task that demands not only favourable historic and social circumstances but an extraordinary imagination. The rebirth of imagination, in the realm of art as in that of politics, has always been prepared for and preceded by analysis and criticism. I believe that this duty has fallen to our generation and the next. But before undertaking the criticism of our societies, their history and their actuality, we Hispanic American writers must begin by criticising ourselves. First, we must cure ourselves of the intoxication of simplistic and simplifying ideologies.”
México e Irlanda se enorgullecen de sus herencias. Comparten legados culturales, intelectuales y artísticos que poseen la capacidad de enriquecer nuestros futuros y la condición humana en todo el mundo. Nuestras culturas tan distintivas no son impedimentos de los que nos tengamos de deshacer en la carrera por la homogeneidad digital, son ventajas de la composición de un tapiz compartido hecho de hilos y colores diversos, formados con nuestras habilidades en común. Están en el corazón de lo que tenemos para ofrecer al mundo. Definen nuestra voz, nuestras ideas y, utilizando una frase ubicua de hoy en día, nuestro “contenido”.
En Irlanda, como en México, nos enorgullecen los logros imaginativos de nuestra gente. Y mientras puede ser un poco desconcertante imaginar a W. B. Yeats o a Carlos Fuentes tuiteando, no hay dudas de que veremos a los nuevos y talentosos hijos e hijas de México e Irlanda expresar sus dotes de manera entrelazada con las capacidades instrumentales del mundo digital.
[Mexico and Ireland have proud heritages. They share cultural, intellectual, artistic legacies that have the capacity to enrich our futures and the human condition worldwide. Our distinctive cultures are not handicaps to be shed in the race for any digital homogeneity; they are assets in the composition of a shared tapestry of diverse threads and colours made with shared skills. They are the heart of what we have to offer the world. They define our voice, our ideas and – to borrow a ubiquitous phrase of today – our ‘content’.
In Ireland, as in Mexico, we take great pride in the imaginative achievements of our people. And while it may be a little disconcerting to imagine W.B. Yeats or Carlos Fuentes tweeting, there is no doubt we will see the new gifted sons and daughters of Mexico and Ireland expressing their talent in ways interwoven with the instrumental capacities of the digital world.]
Séamus Heaney was the fourth Irishman to win a Nobel prize for literature. He died just a few months ago and is sadly missed, not just in Ireland, but around the world.
In his first collection of poems, published in 1966, he wrote of being in his room writing, while listening to his father, a farmer, digging outside, as his grandfather had before him, and of taking on a responsibility.
He concluded:
“But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.”
Who knows how many of this generation have already been thinking of their parents and the pens they wrote with, and contrasting this with the smartphone or tablet in their hands. Looking at that smartphone and deciding – ‘I’ll create with it’or ‘With it I will encounter the marvellous’.
And whether they create new businesses, new works of art, new medicines or new technologies, let us give as many of them as possible the opportunity to remake our world, bring humanity some steps forward to the realisation of our shared possibilities; and to do so with grace and humour too.
Gracias