REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE LORD PROVOST OF GLASGOW CITY CHAMBERS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A RECEPTION HOSTED BY THE LORD PROVOST OF GLASGOW CITY CHAMBERS, MONDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 1999
Lord Provost, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Tá áthas an domhain orm go bhfuil mé anseo faoi dheireadh sa chathair seo, ar mo chéad
chuairt mar Uachtarán na hÉireann go hAlbain.
The City of Glasgow is known for the warmth of its welcome and for putting the stranger at
ease. Thank you, Lord Provost, for doing just that.
Like so many Irish people and particularly like so many from Northern Ireland, I have beaten a path to Glasgow many, many times. So although this is my first visit as President, this is a city I have long loved and which holds many lovely family memories for Martin and myself. It was here that we introduced our eldest daughter to the magnificent Christ of St. John of the Cross in St. Mungo’s and knew the joy of a child’s wonder at the gift of artistic genius.
Such a different experience from that of the generations who trekked this way over the last 150 years. They came to Scotland in search of the economic opportunities available in this ‘workshop of the world’. I understand, Lord Provost, that your own forebears, like those of so many Glaswegians, hailed from Donegal.
The arrival here of large numbers of Irish emigrants created an unbreakable bond between Ireland and Glasgow. There can be few other cities in the world where links with Ireland run as deep as they do here. For generations, the Clyde was a beacon for Irish emigrants who helped to make it a hub of trade and industry. Irish emigrants also helped instil the unique atmosphere that is Glasgow’s.
Among them were countless decent men and women who used their hard earned chances well, helping to build up their adopted homelands, developing parallel identities, loyal to their new home and faithful to the land they had left. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the role played by Irish people and people of Irish descent in the development of the West of Scotland and to the many organisations that helped to ensure they never lost touch with their roots across the Irish sea.
Many of those organisations are represented here today - organisations such as the GAA, which recently celebrated the centenary of its existence here in Scotland. I am glad to have the opportunity to meet representatives of the local GAA and to wish them well for their second hundred years of activity in Scotland. Irish dancing, too, has thrived here. Indeed it is remarkable that the dancing community is strong enough to have won the right to host the World Championships of Irish Dancing in this city in the year 2001. This will bring thousands of dancers to Glasgow in a shared celebration of our traditional dance culture.
The links between the Irish language and the Gaelic of Scotland represent another significant strand in the relationship between our two countries. I am delighted to see that this ancient connection will be given new life through the Columba Initiative, which is being co-sponsored by our two Governments. And of course our shared Celtic heritage is equally evident in the affinities between our respective strands of traditional music, whose tunes are often interchangeable.
I am very grateful to you, Lord Provost, for hosting this reception which gives me an opportunity to meet so many people from the West of Scotland who have personal or ancestral roots in Ireland. Indeed these wonderful City Chambers in which we are gathered, provide very clear evidence of how strongly you value this relationship with Ireland. The room where I met some of the members of the Council has portraits of Yeats and Shaw and I believe that one of the murals here in the Banqueting Hall was painted by the Irish artist, Sir John Lavery, whose portrait of his wife Hazel, featured for so many years on our currency notes. One of the display cases contains a piece of Waterford Crystal presented by the City of Dublin to mark the fact that Dublin succeeded Glasgow as European City of Culture in 1991.
This building is worthy of a city of Glasgow’s stature and constitutes a remarkable expression of civic pride. Of course, Glasgow has always been a place of achievement, whether as a medieval cathedral city and seat of learning, as a centre of trade and commerce or as a place in the vanguard of the industrial revolution.
But the twentieth century has not always been kind to the great cities of the industrial revolution, like Glasgow or indeed my native Belfast. You went through a difficult adjustment period as traditional industries declined and alternative sources of wealth and employment were slow to materialise. Glasgow’s recent development illustrates how a city can, with sufficient reserves of resolve and civic spirit, adapt itself to changed circumstances. In recent times, you have won a reputation for urban regeneration and cultural vitality, which has been recognised by Glasgow’s remarkable achievement in being crowned this year as the UK City of Architecture and Design.
Ireland too, has undergone its own regeneration in recent years. With annual growth rates averaging 8%, the Irish economy has doubled in size since 1987. This has created unprecedented levels of prosperity. It has transformed us from a country of emigration into one that people want to come to in search of economic advancement, just as in past generations Irish people found new homes in places like Glasgow. We now experience net inward migration from Britain, a phenomenon which helps feed our contemporary self-confidence and our fervent hope that, with these gifts of economic prosperity, cultural renaissance and peace, we will create in Ireland a fully inclusive society where none are poor, where each person counts and has a real chance in life.
We are on the dawn of a new era both on the island of Ireland and in the context of British-Irish relations. It is significant that the Good Friday Agreement specifically recognises the potential contributions of Scotland and Wales in underpinning the peace process by working coherently for firmer, more effective, more humanly decent mutual relationships. The British-Irish Council, or “Council of the Isles” as it is often called in Scotland, will soon be part of the new set of structures through which our countries will go forward in this great new adventure in partnership and befriending. The Millennium could not have a better start. The Child of Bethlehem could not have a better gift than the permanent peace I know you join with me in wishing for the people of Northern Ireland and of these islands.
It was a great pleasure to meet you all and I look forward to learning more about today’s Scotland during the remainder of my visit.
Gura fada buan sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.