REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR THE SLOVENIAN COMMUNITY IN IRELAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION FOR THE SLOVENIAN COMMUNITY IN IRELAND, TUESDAY, 28 NOVEMBER, 2006
Good Day. Dober dan
Thank you, Ambassador Mikša, Mrs. Mikša and the Embassy team for organising this gathering of some of Ireland’s Slovene community and for the warmth of your welcome. Membership of the European Union has brought Ireland and Slovenia into a unique, new partnership and created huge, new opportunities for our peoples to get to know one another, our respective countries and cultures, and I am delighted to celebrate that new partnership by meeting with Ireland’s small but very welcome Slovenian community. I hope your experience of Ireland is as good as our experience of Slovenia.
Martin and I have happy memories of a state visit to Slovenia in June 2001 when former President Milan Kučan and his wife Štefka were our very hospitable hosts. We also enjoyed on that occasion meeting with Prime Minister Drnovšek, now Slovenia’s President and Foreign Minister Rupel. Earlier this year we returned but this time as tourists to enjoy, in a leisurely way, the great beauty of the Slovene landscape and the ready hospitality of the Slovenian people. I can easily understand why most Slovenians are reluctant to leave their beloved homeland and why so many Irish tourists are heading to Ljubljana, Kranska Gora, Lake Bled or the pretty coastal resorts.
And culturally too, we are growing ever closer with short stories by one of Slovenia’s foremost contemporary writers, Drago Jančar now published in Ireland in both the Irish and English languages, and plays by contemporary Irish dramatists like Brian Friel and Conor McPherson proving popular with audiences in Slovenia. It’s the same story with Irish and Slovenian music and dance. Performances in Slovenia by Riverdance and by the Dubliners have drawn large audiences and, last month, when a singer popular with all generations in Slovenia, Andrej Šifrer, celebrated 30 years as a performing artist, he arranged for Irish musicians, singers and dancers to participate in his anniversary performance.
Very soon we will use the same currency, with Slovenia adopting the euro next January – proof positive of your country’s remarkable progress. And then in 2008
Slovenia will become the first of the new Member States to hold the Presidency of the European Union. Already the massive work has begun and we in Ireland wish Slovenia every success for its Presidency. We know that you will do a truly memorable job just as you did with the Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) throughout last year.
Our long histories of division, conflict, oppression and struggle for freedom, our size as small nations, our pride in our own identity and our willingness to engage with our neighbours and with the world, these give the Slovenians and the Irish easy access to each other’s psyches and form a basis for fast and lasting friendship. The Union gives to our children the opportunity for a shared future.
We are glad that some of you have chosen to make your lives or part of your lives here in Ireland, to be the human bridges linking our two countries as they begin to grow and develop our new partnership within the Union. May we all watch with pride and hope as our two nations flourish in freedom, in democacy and in peace.
Thank you. Hvala vam lepa. Srečno! (Good luck!)