REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR THE IRISH COMMUNITY, GRAND HYATT HOTEL, SAO PAULO
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR THE IRISH COMMUNITY, GRAND HYATT HOTEL, SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, 25TH MARCH, 2004
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc tráthnóna. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil libh as ucht an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Your Excellency Governor Geraldo Alckmin, Your Excellency Mayor Marta Suplicy, Your Excellency Rector Adolfo Jose Melfi, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Boa noite a todos – good evening everybody. It is indeed an honour to be in Sao Paulo particularly during the city’s 450th anniversary and to have the opportunity to celebrate with Sao Paolo’s Irish community and their many friends. We are still close enough to St. Patrick’s Day to add a bit of Irish culture to this great city’s celebrations. And it is a remarkable city. Coming as I do from a small island the scale of the city is overwhelming and the contrasts are stunning. Not for nothing is it called ‘the powerful engine that leads the nation.’
While the Irish Community here is relatively small it has been very effective in building human links between Ireland and Brazil, links of friendship, affection, of mutual respect and curiosity. Foremost of course is the large Irish missionary community in Brazil. These remarkable sons and daughters of Ireland have made their homes among the poor - devoting their lives to their care and to the improvement of their conditions. It is an honourable and generations-old tradition of care and one that we in Ireland are immensely proud of.
Our missionaries are Ireland’s best ambassadors in every part of the world, for through them the world’s most overlooked people have come to know Ireland and Ireland’s values. They are in large part the reason why Ireland is so respected and welcomed throughout the world and I owe them a lot for I have personally been the beneficiary of that warm welcome time and again. Today, they face huge challenges as vocations drop and they get older without the reassurance of younger successors. Yet their work continues and they resiliently fight on in faith and in hope, never seeking recognition or thanks - but richly deserving both.
Today Irish missionaries in Brazil and elsewhere are planning for a future where the work and projects they started will continue and grow and develop through local collaborative effort. What they do here is the very essence of selflessness.
It is wonderful to see that these links of care are complemented by cultural curiosity about one another. The Irish Studies Programme at the University of Sao Paulo under the direction of Drs Munira Mutran and Laura Izarra is a very fine example of that curiosity at work and I’m glad that I will have the opportunity to visit the University tomorrow. The programme has an enviable record of publications, conferences and activities aimed at the general public and it is heartening also to see that there is now a network of Irish Studies Centres spanning some thirteen universities in all parts of Brazil most of which were established by graduates of the programme at Sao Paulo. This is an impressive and very welcome development and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone involved.
In a well-deserved recognition of this achievement the International Association for the Studies of Irish Literatures held its annual conference for 2002 at USP. The University also organises the main annual celebrations in Brazil of “Bloomsday” and have I believe exciting plans in store for this year’s big Joycean centenary in June.
The commercial contacts between Brazil and Ireland are also very fertile ground for both of us - a fact testified to by the extensive trade delegation which has accompanied me on this visit. From software to education these representatives of over thirty companies were very busy at this morning’s business breakfast exploring opportunities and establishing new contacts which we hope will bring prosperity to both Ireland and Brazil.
Sao Paulo is clearly the economic powerhouse of Brazil. What happens to the Sao Paulo economy is of vital importance for the country as a whole and we take heart from the important link between Ireland’s Kerry Group and this city under the direction of the group’s Managing Director for Brazil Malcolm Sheil and his colleagues. Ireland is a successful first world country but with a humbling third world memory. We have in the past decade surprised even ourselves at the extent of our economic success and the huge changes wrought in the quality of our people’s lives. It is a story we would wish for all who have known the sorrow, the waste and the hopelessness of poverty. It is a story we wish for Brazil and her children.
Your presence here has made this evening very special and I am particularly grateful because I know for many of you it meant a long and arduous journey. Ireland owes you a debt that cannot ever be properly repaid for the many ways in which you reveal the spirit of Ireland to Brazil and bring Brazil to Irish hearts. I hope that tonight’s reception, with the best of traditional music from home, is a small recompense for all the ways you make us proud of our global Irish family and its unique vocation for friendship.
Go maire sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.
Muito obrigada – thank you very much.