REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE NORESIDE EDUCATION CENTRE, KILKENNY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE NORESIDE EDUCATION CENTRE, KILKENNY THURSDAY 12 NOVEMBER 1998
I am delighted to be here at the Noreside Education Centre for the opening of the new Computer Learning Facility – and I am very grateful indeed for the warm welcome I have received this afternoon. I am grateful too for the opportunity to visit what is a unique facility in Ireland – the Kilkenny Children’s University which, combined with the services of the Education Centre, is offering a very valuable education service to the people of Kilkenny – especially the young people for whom access to a broad education will be particularly important in the years ahead as they move on to further education and careers in later life.
By coming here this afternoon, I want also to give recognition and affirmation for the very valuable work that the Noreside Resource Centre are doing for the community in Kilkenny - providing assistance to people on an individual basis in their personal lives – helping people to identify and take opportunities – and promoting a culture of learning amongst adults and children through your many services, both at the Resource Centre and the Education Centre. It is in through the provision of advice and assistance for people in handling their own affairs that you are helping to break down barriers and to ensure that the people that you serve are getting access to the statutory services to which they can and should look for help. I know that there are other dimensions to the work that you do – in, for example, helping people to prepare for job interviews – in running social events for the unemployed – in the provision of secretarial assistance – and in the personal development services that you provide. All of these are in their own way empowering the community - creating a new level of self-confidence within people themselves – and opening up new points of access for them to play their part in the social and economic life of a community that they are proud to live in.
I know of course, that running a centre as progressive as this is not simple – that it requires the support and commitment of many groups and individuals. I would like to commend the generous spirit of the many people who are giving of their time and energy in the service of others in their community. I also want to commend the Irish Congress of Trade Unions who promote the Resource Centre - and of course FÁS who, through the Community Employment Scheme, are providing funding. I know that the new facility that we are opening today would not have been possible without the very welcome assistance which you have received from the Bank of Ireland – and I would like to pay a particular tribute to their spirit of community in proving the much-need help for this project – through their sponsorship of the entire facility, from the electrical work to the computers and equipment. Through their participation they have demonstrated how the business and the community are so inextricably linked – how they can work together to reach out to new horizons and for new goals.
I know too that the Resource Centre has also received very generous support from the Department of Social Welfare, Kilkenny County Council and St. Canice’s Credit Union. Each has contributed in its own way and is part of a very successful partnership which very clearly has the community in Kilkenny as its focus. Over the last ten years that partnership – drawn together by the Noreside Resource Centre – has been ready to meet the changing demands of the community as the shifts in priorities have dictated. That ability to meet ever changing needs and to react quickly to circumstances is the essence of a successful partnership – the kind of local partnerships that are working all over Ireland to transform communities.
In the decades ahead, the advances in technology and the changes in society that are coming out of our economic progress will inevitably mean the focus of need will shift with it. The secret of your success has been in your ability to meet change in the past – and as is evidence by the forward looking facility that you have here today, I have no doubt that you can continue to meet the new challenges that a changing society in Ireland will present.
This computer learning facility is in a way a symbol of the future – a sign of how the new technologies with digital communications and the Internet are giving us more and more access to information – bringing it right into our homes. The ability to harness those new facilities is the key to your future success. Now you have that key.