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REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE IPA/NCEA CONFERRING CEREMONIES DUBLIN CASTLE

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE IPA/NCEA CONFERRING CEREMONIES DUBLIN CASTLE, 3 NOVEMBER 1998

Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur bhfáilte caoin. Tá áthas orm a bheith anseo I bhur measc inniu ar an ocáid tábhachtach seo i gCaisleán Átha Cliath.

I know that this is a special day for students of the IPA – a day when you take some time out with family and friends to savour your success – and reflect on what you have achieved through sheer hard work and determination.

It is a day when you can finally say to yourselves that all the reading and research, the writing and re-writing, the studying and memorising – augmented perhaps by a little “midnight oil” from time to time – has been worth it. I am particularly delighted to have been afforded this opportunity to be a part of your day – and through my presence, to acknowledge your work and what you have achieved. For giving me the honour of presenting prizes, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to the President and Chairman of the Institute of Public Administration.

Since its foundation in 1957, the Institute of Public Administration has been promoting best practice in the field of administration. Through its many publications and its growing range of courses it has been a very significant influence on the evolution of the public service – ensuring that it has been well equipped to cope with the changing economic conditions and circumstances within which it has to operate.

As a body concerned with the development of people in an organisational context – with their training and development – with their role as administrators – and as important assets and resources that are very much influenced by changing circumstances – the IPA has operated on the basis that development is an on-going process – a process of continuous review and critique – and of constant response to the demands of change.

Graduation marks a milestone of achievement – an end but not an end in itself – because it also marks a moving on. Much of what we have learnt will in time have to be unlearnt – new insights, fresh wisdom will challenge things we now hold dear and true. Education equips us to handle the process of sifting, discarding and learning anew – to do it comfortably and courageously. Talk of prize-giving reminds me of the story about the man who had very little education, but was tremendously successful in business.

At a prize-giving in his old school he lectured the young students by telling them that they should “always remember that education is a great thing. There’s nothing like education. Take arithmetic. Through education we learn that twice two makes four, twice six makes twelve, seven sevens make . . . . . . and then of course there’s geography!”.

It has been said that change is the only constant. The great intellectual giant of modern Irish education – Cardinal John Newman said “to be human is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often”. The pace of change in all our lives speaks of a drive for perfection of a sort. Advances in modern communications and the advent of the information superhighway have added to the pace of change and are profoundly impacting on national economies – and on business, the public services and education.

Management theorist Igor Ansoff coined the phrase ‘environmental turbulence’ back in the 1960's – and that phrase has even more resonance today for people and organisations facing the challenges of a radically globalised, high-tech world.

Through its relationship with the National Council for Educational Awards, the Institute has been equipping people with the capability of confidently and self-assuredly adapting to new challenges and changing circumstances, and to harness the resources that are or could be at their disposal.

To meet that developmental challenge requires a frame of mind and attitude that is open, curious and always ready to address new requirements. Forging that curiosity into an energy, which drives effective change, calls for special people of rare insight and wisdom. All successful organisations depend on people who are dedicated to the task of leadership and management, and who are able to react quickly and readily to ever changing circumstances and fortunes - people who know that the person “who uses yesterday’s methods in today’s work, won’t be in business tomorrow”.

All of us who have seen the tremendous pace of development - particularly over the last twenty five years since joining the Common Market – will realise that life-long learning is now very much a part of our lives. Students of Public Administration in particular will be aware of the tremendous contribution of previous generations of administrators, politicians and business people to the development of Ireland’s economy and society – people who did so much in laying the foundation on which our current success has been built.

Through their wisdom and vision in investing in education, we have seen what amounts to a revolution in terms of access to education. As Seamus Heaney puts it in a poem of his “From the Canton of Expectation” – a poem that I love to quote, “Books open in the newly wired kitchens. Young heads that might have dozed a life away against the flanks of milking cows were busy paving and pencilling their first causeways across the prescribed texts”.

For you here today, I know that you have had plenty of practice in ‘pencilling causeways across prescribed texts’.

I know too of the sacrifices that you have made with family and in your social lives – of the difficulty in facing into lectures or essays at the end of a day’s work – of week-ends spent trawling trough tomes and preparing papers. What you have achieved is a personal triumph – a reward for your investment of precious time and resources. Your success also adds to the wealth of knowledge and expertise in the organisations where you work now - and where you will work in the future.

You have built on the foundation of education to move forward with confidence to meet the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead – I congratulate all of you on your success and hope that, from all you have worked for, will come the fulfillment each human heart seeks.

ENDS