REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A NORTH SOUTH RECEPTION, ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A NORTH SOUTH RECEPTION, ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN SATURDAY, 12th JULY, 2003
Cuireann sé áthas ar mo chroí fáilte fíorchaoin a chur romhaibh go léir chuig Áras an Uachtaráin. Is ócáid speisialta í seo domsa agus tá gliondar orm í a cheiliúradh libh anseo inniu.
It is a great pleasure for both Martin and I to welcome you to Áras an Uachtaráin this evening to mark the Twelfth of July. Céad Míle Fáilte - one hundred thousand welcomes to each and every one of you, thank you for joining us.
We know that many of you have travelled a long way to be with us and many of you have also made a considerable journey of the heart to be here. For reasons of history or politics you may have been fearful or distrustful and yet you have come and we are very glad that you are here. We see in your presence the kind of civility and generosity of spirit which we hope will in time transform relationships on this island - making good friends of those who look at things differently, taking nothing from each other but only adding to our respective store of friendships and happy memories. We gather today a new generation of Jacobites and Williamites in a new era seeking to comprehend and befriend each other so that the generations to come will not know the waste of violence, the hurt of contempt.
This day is of course most associated with the famous Battle of the Boyne though historians now tell us that the twelfth of July actually marks the anniversary of the Battle of Aughrim and the final defeat of the Jacobite forces in Ireland. Still, the Battle of the Boyne remains the symbol around which the swirling currents of our different traditions mix and separate in the ebb and flow of time in all its complexity. The river Boyne itself now represents two currents in a stream of identity, each different but each swelling the same tide of history.
Our history is a fascinating mix of contrasts. This year alone, for instance, we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Flight of the Earls, a time of great mourning among the Gaelic people and yet it is also the 400th anniversary of the first translation of the New Testament into Irish. The 12th of July itself is also the anniversary of the launch of Wood’s Halfpence, the event which brought Dean Swift into Irish public life and, as many of you will know, it is the anniversary of the death in 1949 of Douglas Hyde, in whose shoes I walk.
The history from which we have emerged has moulded us into the shapes we are with all our individualities and idiosyncrasies. It has also supplied the labels which we carry about with us or apply to others. Without compromising those things we hold dear we have an obligation and an opportunity to build a culture of respect for difference and of relaxed curiosity about what we have in common as well as what separates us. To do that we need to get to know one another and that is what today is about.
The Phoenix Park is a very appropriate location for this gathering. Not only because this park, like the island which we share, is a garden of great natural beauty with more than enough room for us all, but also because the Phoenix, in ancient times, represented re-birth and it is my fervent hope that meetings such as this can re-kindle the good neighbourliness, the kindly greeting across the garden fence, the trust, which benefits from regular encouragement and fertilization like any good garden.
W.B.Yeats as a boy got his first introduction to the pleasure of rhyme from a book of Orange verse which he read with delight. And music which all of us on this island have a love of, is always better in stereo than mono. The two traditions each have a musical heritage that is neither fully separate nor fully shared but has a lot to offer all of us if we only open hearts and ears to both the Lambeg Drum and the Uilleann pipes, the orange flute and the Irish fiddle. They each have their own genius, their own story and the story of this island is incomplete if one of them is missing. Here today we think of them both not as armies pitched across the river from each other, fearful, dreading the slaughter to come, their songs stirring them to battle, their laments making them long for the safety of home. We are a lucky generation. We meet in a home built sixty years after the Boyne, a home that was for one hundred and fifty years the home of the Viceroys and is now the home of the Presidents of Ireland – a home which holds with respect, the stories and memories of Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Nationalist, Ascendancy and poor alike. No matter what your view of Ireland’s tormented history, its politics or its religious traditions, here in Aras an Uachtarain there is a part of your story. I hope you will enjoy your visit and the entertainment provided by the legendary David Hammond and the fantastic Arty McGlynn and Nollaig Casey.
I would like to thank our MC for this evening Eugene Downes, Civil Defence Officers Mary Kennedy and Barbara Brezina for their expert assistance and of course the staff here at the Áras who have worked so hard to make this an occasion of comfort, fun, humour and hospitality for everyone.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.