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Remarks at the 2013 Gaisce Gold Award Ceremony

Dublin Castle, 12th November 2013

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you all in Dublin Castle to present some wonderful, talented and tenacious young people with the 2013 Gaisce Gold Medals. This award comes to crown your journey of generous commitment in the service of your community, a journey which involved great perseverance and the surpassing of your own limits. Today is your day, a very special occasion on which yourself, your families and friends, your teachers and mentors, and all those who have been part of your path to Gold can and should feel immensely proud.

Is cuí agus is tábachtach searmanais den sórt seo mar aitheantas dár saoránaigh. Tugann siad an deis dúinn uilig aitheantas agus ómós a thabhairt don iliomad slí ina bhfuil na daoine óga atá bailithe sa seomra seo tar éis cuidiú le saibhriú a bpobal áitiúil agus, thairis sin, le saibhriú na tíre i gcoitinne trína gcuid diansaothair, a gcuid smaointe agus a ndíogras anamúil.

[Ceremonies such as this one are both appropriate as a recognition and important to our citizens. They afford us all the opportunity of acknowledging and honouring the many ways in which the young people gathered in this room have – through their hard work, ideas and spirited enthusiasm – contributed to enriching their local communities, and, beyond that, our society as a whole.]

It is sometimes difficult for an individual person to envision what contributions he or she can, individually, make to the public good, or the nation at large. Working for the betterment of society on a local level is an obvious way to achieve this. Indeed one of the great merits of Gaisce, since its launch in 1985, has been to foster a culture of real and active citizenship among our young people, through the promotion of volunteering and through its encouragement of longstanding commitment to a specific group or cause.

Such an ability to commit, and to take part in the workings of a local organisation or association is the basis of any genuine republican culture. It is one of the surest means to embed an awareness of and care for the res publica – the public good. As one of the finest commentators of the role of civil society in democratic life, Alexis de Tocqueville, once remarked:

“The greater the multiplicity of small affairs, the more do men, even without knowing it, acquire facility in prosecuting great undertakings in common.”

Democracy in America (1835), book 2, chapter 7.

In other words, citizens who are active in associations and civic organisations all the more easily acquire the “habits of the heart” that are necessary to enrich the life of the Republic. These qualities of dedication, concern for the public good, initiative and perseverance are ones which each and every one of you whom I have the pleasure to present with a Gold Award today will carry into adulthood. These are skills of character which will serve you well throughout your lives as both private persons and citizens.

Therefore I would like to thank all those involved in Gaisce for providing you with the framework which allowed you to pursue your formative endeavours in a structured manner. I commend the Gaisce Council, led by Chairman John Concannon and interim C.E.O. Anna Coyle for their dedication to promoting the Award. Some 300,000 young people have signed up to this Award over the years and, when compared with other similar international schemes, Gaisce has the largest involvement per capita.

This afternoon I also wish to acknowledge the great contribution of Gaisce’s former Chief Executive, Barney Callaghan who, for many precious years, brought his ideas, energy and generosity to the programme.

May I, finally, extend my sincere thanks to each and everyone of the President’s Award Leaders, who so perceptively discern the needs of young people and lend them a hand throughout their challenging journey. I know that there are about 1,500 Award Leaders across the country – primarily teachers, but also independent volunteers – who give their time and effort to support thousands of young people each year. They do so for no other reward than the fulfilment they derive from contributing to enhancing these young women and men’s life experience.

I am aware that Gaisce is looking to strengthen the role of both the Award Leaders and the programme’s Alumni. I wish you every success in these endeavours: I sincerely hope that new people will feel encouraged to join Gaisce’s support network, thereby reinforcing the voluntary tradition that has been such a crucial feature of this programme since its inception.

Another important feature of the Gaisce Awards is that they are designed to appeal to young people from all segments of society. As we all know, this category of “young people” covers a very diverse and dynamic population, with a variety of needs and aspirations, faced with different challenges and difficulties. Through their participation in the Gaisce programme, young people are called upon to develop their skills and to gain confidence in their abilities within the frame of their own particular circumstances, and according to a pact which they seal with themselves as much as with those whom they get involved with. This means that the Awards are potentially open to anyone in the relevant age category.

Yet work remains to be done if we are to ensure that the formative experience offered by Gaisce is truly accessible to every young Irish person, notably to those young people who find themselves outside of formal education. I am aware that the fulfilment of this goal has been identified as one of Gaisce’s priorities in the coming years and, in a recent meeting with the Chairman and acting C.E.O., I assured them of my solidarity and support.

Is de riachtanas go dtiocfaidh ár ndaoine óga in aibíocht ar a n-éirim féin agus a gcumas – beag beann ar a gcúlra sóisialta nó ar na srianta sonracha faoinar mhair siad ag tréimshse áirithe dá saol.

[It is essential that our young people – whatever their social background, or the specific limitations that they may experience at any stage in their life – become aware of their own worth and potential.]

I feel confident to say that each of you who are present here have risen to the challenge of voluntarily committing to doing something worthwhile and life-enhancing for both yourself and the community. All of you have given of your time, talent and energy to achieve your chosen objective – whether it consisted in assisting in the Special Olympics, walking the Camino or the Dingle Way, or coaching a football team. Your stories are so different, yet each reveals the endurance, fortitude, adaptability, creativity and generosity of which the young people of Ireland are capable.

The singularity and strength of each individual story also constitutes a powerful reminder of the immense potential encapsulated in every human life. Indeed life is about possibility and the opening up of new horizons. It is about the exploration of both known and imagined territories through the combined powers of will and imagination.

As the Irish poet, philosopher and Catholic scholar John O’Donohue, put it in his essay entitled The poetics of possibility:

“The imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is alive, fixated positions cannot claim final authority. Givenness is not allowed to proclaim any despotism of facts … the beauty of imagination is its openness to novelty. New possibility has permission to invite it anywhere.”

Poetics of possibility, p 23.

In the same essay, O’Donohue developed a reflection on ‘the impossible’ – or, in fact, ‘the apparently impossible’ – as a “call to go beyond.” It is a reflection which, I believe, will resonate with many of you who have experienced the liberation of new forces of creativity and transformation through the completion of your Gaisce programme – therefore if I may quote my late friend John O’Donohue a bit further:

“Not everything that seems prima facie impossible is in fact impossible. At least as a minimal requirement, the impossible is open to being questioned and critiqued … And often the subversive force of the question begins to reveal that what was considered impossible is not as fixed as was thought heretofore.”

And he went on to quote the French poet, Paul Valéry, who has two wonderful lines describing the light that difficulty holds and the intensity of brightness that burns at the heart of impossibility:

Une difficulté est une lumière

Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil.

[A difficulty is a light

An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.]

And so again, I would like to congratulate this year’s Gaisce Gold Award recipients. May I leave them with one last, quite personal, piece of advice, and encourage them to tackle the world, and do so with joy!

Go raibh mile maith agaibh go léir.