REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE AMBASSADOR OF IRELAND TO NEW ZEALAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE AMBASSADOR OF IRELAND TO NEW ZEALAND WELLINGTON TUE 30 OCTOBER, 2007
Ambassador Ó Fainín, Distinguished Guests, Kia Ora, Fáilte.
I am delighted to be here with you in this wonderful city of Wellington this evening. Thank you for your warm welcome.
I hope that you had the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful performance by the musicians and dancers who have accompanied me on this visit. They are part of a project called Green Fire Islands, a melding of Irish traditional music and Maori music which will be touring here over the coming months and culminating in a concert in Auckland on St. Patrick’s Day next year. So here we have a new generation of musicians creating a new musical partnership which delves deep into the pasts of two ancient and culturally fascinating traditions and brings them into a sharp new contemporary focus.
In some ways this State Visit is doing much the same thing - building on age-old ties between Ireland and New Zealand and at the same time setting the scene for even wider future partnerships and engagement. From those far off days when a number of Irishmen accompanied Captain Cook, migration to these shores from Ireland has brought many men, women and children who invested their lives in this, their new home. They carried with them a lonely love of Ireland and they grew a new heart for a new homeland. They brought their music, dance, energy, ambition, faith, resilience, courage and camaraderie. They built new families, new communities and with the Maori people and the newcomers from around the world, they built a much respected and admired society, peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian, caring. They built a rugby team that strikes dread and terror into the hearts of Irish spectators and when our respective teams next meet in Dublin next year it will be in a park named after a former Bishop of Auckland-Croke Park. Each time the All-Blacks beat us we comfort ourselves with the memory that the first captain of the All-Blacks was a Donegal man Dave Gallagher though you’ll forgive us if we occasionally wish he had stayed at home.
The roll of honour of the Irish who made a notable contribution to New Zealand society is a long one and one of which we are immensely proud. Their success here was often a crucial source of energy and hope back home in an Ireland devastated by mass emigration, poverty and conflict. Their hard-earned wages often found their way to Ireland where they helped keep body and soul together and helped educate a new generation. We owe them a debt of gratitude which can never be properly repaid but I hope that the remarkable story of modern Ireland vindicates their sacrifice and their solidarity.
Today Ireland is high achieving, prosperous and peaceful. A century and a half of outward migration has ended and now we have net inward migration. We look to you to learn how we can emulate your proud record as a tolerant, well-integrated multicultural society.
Now we visit one another as tourists, as business partners, as gap-year students circumnavigating the world. The plane and the internet have bridged the miles and allowed us to refresh those old ties much more easily than ever before and to befriend one another anew in our own generation.
We are kith and kin to one another and as both our countries flourish, as they raise their voices on a world stage in support of common democratic values and a common vision for humanity, we can be sure that Ireland and New Zealand and their peoples will long be valued and close friends.
Each one of you is the human bridge that keeps us close, that helps us to enter easily into each other’s world and perspective. Thank you for your unpaid but essential ambassadorship for Ireland here in New Zealand, thanks to our wonderful Honorary Consul and thanks from all of us to our actual ambassador who is our generous and welcoming host this evening.
Thank you.