REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR DELEGATES OF THE GLOBAL IRISH ECONOMIC FORUM
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR DELEGATES OF THE GLOBAL IRISH ECONOMIC FORUM ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN
A chairde chaoin. Cuireann se áthas ó chroí orm go bhfuil sibh anseo in Áras an
Úachtaráin, agus ba mhaith liom fáilte is fiche a fhearadh romhaibh ar fad. Is
ábhar mhisnigh domsa go bhfuil an oiread sin Éireannaigh fuinniúla,
éifeachtacha, cumasacha ó gach rann den domhain bailithe anseo in Áras an
Úachtaráin.
It is a source of great encouragement and pride to see so many gifted, energetic,
successful members of our global family, assembled in Áras an Uachtaráin this
evening. To every one of you, I extend the traditional welcome of the House,
céad míle fáilte, a 100,000 welcomes. I welcome the members of the
Government who are present and all the delegates who represent Irish based
business, media, arts, culture and civic society.
As President, I have been privileged to meet many of those who have travelled
from abroad, in a wide variety of places and contexts around the world and if I
haven’t met you, I have surely heard of you, for each one of you has used your
talents to make an outstanding contribution to your chosen sphere of human
endeavour. We know you are busy people and yet, when asked, you put your own
preoccupations aside and came to Dublin to share your wisdom and experience
with us as we try to construct a pathway through today’s economic difficulties to a
sustainably prosperous future for all our people, so that Ireland can be the best it
can be for its people and can make the best contribution to Europe, the wider
world and especially the developing world.
Many of you have a strong personal connection to Ireland whether through family
ties or through trade and investment links. Whether you are tied to us by kinship
or friendship your interest in and commitment to Ireland is greatly valued. Those
who are emigrants or of emigrant stock know well the many stories of an
emigrant people who transcended enormous hardship to forge new lives, new
destinies for themselves and their children in adopted homelands. They could not
have done so without courage, determination and an optimism that came from
faith in their capacity to keep on trying.
There is a saying that the pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity while
the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Many people now find
themselves deep in a trough of pessimism and with good reason, as jobs are lost,
businesses falter and homes go into negative equity coming on the heels of a
period of unparalled growth and prosperity. Yet they need and we all need the
faith in the future that comes from an active optimism that is not simply the
vague hope that something will turn up but is rooted in hard talk, fresh thinking
and clear-sighted careful planning, things we believe your individual and collective
wisdom and brainpower are crucial. Your being here helps all of us refocus on
our capacity to overcome great difficulties, a capacity, indeed a characteristic
which President John Fitzgerald Kennedy called ‘the quality of the Irish’ in his
address to Dáil Éireann in 1963.
President Kennedy noted that “the problems of the world cannot possibly be
solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.”
This Forum brings together people who have a facility for thinking and acting
their way through problems to new horizons. You are an important example of
that other great Irish characteristic - our investment in connectedness and in
community, in reinforcing and maintaining family bonds and in helping one
another through life’s many ups and downs. Believe me, all over Ireland, even as
we gather here today, millions of Irish at home and abroad are making that
investment in one another and making the quality of life around them richer,
deeper, more meaningful, fulfilled and happier. One of the biggest investments
we have made in recent years has been in the Peace Process and that too was
constructed with the help of our family and friends abroad. The collective power
of all those brains and hearts shifted the kilter of Irish history and put us on a
course away from the embedded culture of conflict towards a fresh new culture of
consensus and good neighbourliness. It also gave us a new article in our
Constitution which says that the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with
people of Irish ancestry wherever they are in the world. Your presence here
demonstrates that affinity is infinitely more than mere passive nostalgia but is a
leavening agent, an active yeast.
The Global Irish Economic Forum brings home to us that Ireland is considerably
more than a smaller island on the edge of Europe, but the centre of a vast
networked community, a global Irish family. It’s a family to be very proud of and
to be grateful for. The old Irish proverb says ní neart go cur le chéile - there is
strength in unity. In fact at a deeper level it tells us that until we pool our talents
we never fully realise our strength, our power to change things, to make better
things happen. I hope you have felt a real surge of fresh power and optimism at
the Forum and that from your deliberations will come a distilled wisdom we can
put at the service of Ireland, her present and her future and of countries like
Ireland want the best for all their people. I wish this Forum well and thank you
for your participation. Enjoy the evening, enjoy each other’s company and a great
day on Sunday in Croke Park, a place that epitomises the spirit, the power, the
local and global reach of the Gael.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.