REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A BUSINESS LUNCH HOSTED BY TOURISM IRELAND, LOS ANGELES
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A BUSINESS LUNCH HOSTED BY TOURISM IRELAND, LOS ANGELES MONDAY 15 DECEMBER, 2008
Good afternoon everyone. Martin and I thank you for that warm and generous welcome. In return let me extend a heartfelt céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes, to each of you and céad míle buíochas, one hundred thousand thanks for being here. A special thank you to our hosts, Tourism Ireland.
When the first of my relatives left Ireland over sixty years ago to make their lives here in California, not only was it a tediously long journey involving ships, trains and buses, it was for many years a journey that was made only one way. Communication with family back in Ireland was by letter and Christmas cards. Grandparents rarely saw their grandchildren. Remarkably, the links of family, clan and community remained strong and enduring despite the distances and difficulties.
Today, the distance between Ireland and California is easily bridged by air travel, telecommunications and the internet. Increased prosperity has made regular tourists of vast swathes of people and easily accessible, regular, direct air links have brought many of those people to Ireland. Some want to explore their ancestral roots and Ireland is an easy place to do that, for we are a curious people and will gently interrogate every visiting American until we can place their forebears in a particular parish or townland and reunite them with a battalion of long-lost cousins. That natural interest in the visitor is a feature of Ireland’s character in which love of life, of people and spontaneous friendliness play a large part in making the stranger welcome.
We are lucky to have inherited a magnificent set of incredibly varied landscapes and seascapes, each of which has something unique and memorable and all of which are within easy reach of each other, for ours is a small island. For sightseers, hillwalkers, romantics, Ireland is a delight; for golfers it is a dream for we have more golf courses and, especially, links courses per head of population that anywhere else in the world. For horse-racing or watersports enthusiasts, Ireland is as good as it gets and, for those who want history and culture, music, dance, theatre, castles and historic gardens or the buzz of easy-going cities, there is no place to equal it. Huge investment in recent years has given us fantastic quality in service and facilities and attractions and that translates into high satisfaction levels expressed by American visitors returning home after their vacation in Ireland.
Their return journey, though many may not know it, follows in the footsteps of the first visitors from Ireland to America; in fact, probably the first visitor to the Americas from anywhere, Ireland’s famous Brendan the navigator, who is reputed to have sailed there almost a thousand years before Christopher Columbus. Typical of the Irish, we don’t boast about our achievements! Or about our exceptionally mild climate with its occasional soft rain so essential to those forty shades of green and its lack of extreme heat or extreme cold. With the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro moving now back in favour of the American traveller and with huge competition in the Irish services sector, there is good value to be had for the tourist whether he or she fancies a stay in a luxury five-star spa or prefers to rent a thatched cottage or any of the many permutations in between.
With peace and reconciliation now well bedded down in Northern Ireland, it is great to see that, through Tourism Ireland, the whole island of Ireland is promoted jointly as a prime tourism destination. The success of Tourism Ireland is itself a showcase of the huge potential of partnership on the island of Ireland and an indicator of great things to come. We know that Ireland’s journey to peace was given enormous and invaluable assistance by the United States government and people. That says a lot about the close bonds and connections that exist between us. With every visitor both ways, every investor in people both ways, those bonds get stronger. I hope Ireland and California, Ireland and America will refresh and renew those deep ties of friendship and affection in every generation and we will do that best by getting to know our neighbours across the sea in person.
Míle buíochas díbh go léir.