REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A STATE DINNER IN HONOUR OF MR VÁCLAV KLAUS, PRESIDENT OF CZECH REP
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A STATE DINNER IN HONOUR OF MR VÁCLAV KLAUS, PRESIDENT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC ÁRAS AN UACHTARÁIN
Your Excellency President Klaus, Mrs. Klausová,
Members of the Czech delegation, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good evening, Dobry večer
It is my great pleasure to extend to you, President Klaus, a warm ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’, a hundred thousand welcomes to Ireland and to this dinner in your honour. Your visit marks a further enhancement of the fast-developing ties between Ireland and the Czech Republic and indeed you are no stranger among us for you have previously visited Ireland, North and South. You wrote after your visit as Prime Minister in 1996 of Ireland’s friendly welcome. I trust that you will find that has not changed and allow me to say not just welcome but welcome back!
In October 1999, I was privileged to make the first Irish State Visit to the Czech Republic. Martin and I were shown memorable kindness, including by you Mr President when we met in the Chamber of Deputies. We were spellbound by Prague and with Český Krumlov with its fascinating baroque theatre and castle protected by rather scary brown bears. Your country was then in the throes of leaving a troubled past behind and in 2004 it was our privilege to host in this house the Day of Welcomes when the Czech Republic joined the European Union and took its place around the table of the European family. That day made us partners with a shared future that is ours to build as we are doing here, by making sure we are not strangers to one another. In fact, although we were estranged by geography and 20th century history, as soon as we get into conversation with one another we discover there is in fact an old album of longstanding historic links between us - we are not such strangers as we might have believed.
Our wandering famous Irish monk St Gall, for example, has revered links with Prague, and as far back as 1629, that city’s legendary Charles University, still one of the most distinguished, had as its rector an Irish Franciscan. Today you can walk down Prague’s Hybernská ulice or ‘street of the Irish’ and remember that almost four centuries ago Irish monks founded a monastery there.
In more modern times there was much intellectual cross-stimulation. Our great “Liberator,” Daniel O’Connell is said to have inspired the Bohemian Repeal Club while Eamon de Valera often cited the example of the establishment of Czechoslovakia to bolster Ireland’s claim to independence in the 1920s. And forty years ago as the students of Prague faced the might of the Soviet Army we felt a strong solidarity with your beleaguered people and our own longing for civil and human rights saw the birth of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement in that same year. All over the world in that fateful year markers were being put down that the days of equality were at hand and the days of oppression were running out.
Those noble values of freedom from oppression, of human rights, of democracy and the rule of good law now infuse and guide the European Union which is our common homeland. We work together to give them practical expression throughout our Union and our world.
By the time we come to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Day of Enlargement, the Czech Republic will assume the European Presidency for the first time, a role we wish you every success in. The motto of that Presidency is ‘Europe without Barriers’ and we hope that through your leadership we will see the further realisation of that longstanding Union ambition. Already Ireland, like many other member states, is working through the lived reality of that ambition. We have become home to a significant number of migrants primarily from within the European Union. Among them are over ten thousand Czech nationals who live and work here, helping our communities to deepen and strengthen, helping our economy and helping all of us grow the European Union of good neighbours who know one another well.
The newcomers will have found here an older generation of Czech emigrants to Ireland who came in much more violent times and who made an important contribution to many aspects of Irish life. Today, emigration has not the same character of finality about it as it once had. People now come and go, travelling freely and reasonably cheaply between original homeland and adopted homeland. They stay closely in touch with home by e-mail and mobile phone, the videos of what they are doing right now this minute can be seen live thousands of miles away thanks to the amazing gadgetry of today’s easily accessible technologies.
We have benefited enormously from the vast network of personal contact built up between the Irish and the Czechs. These intimate daily interactions between Ireland and the Czech Republic represent the very embodiment of a shared Europe and last year’s stellar success of the Irish film, Once, with its Czech and Irish co-stars points up the creative potential of this exciting new era of multiple interactions between our two countries.
The generations growing up now with peace, partnership and prosperity as their backdrop have much to look forward to and much to be grateful for. They will have their challenges too, not least the creation of robust international, financial and economic systems with equally robust, humanly decent values but they can draw considerable inspiration from the journey already travelled by their predecessors who faced much more formidable odds.
The story of the Czech Republic, like the story of Ireland, is part of the narrative of that difficult journey. We both earned our freedom the hard way and we used our freedom to commit to a future as members of the European Union. Today we can see all around us evidence of the transforming power of the Union when allied to our own efforts. We know our strength is in our partnership, an old Irish proverb said it long ago - ní neart go chur le chéile - only together do we reveal our truest and best strength.
Mr President, in this year, the ninetieth anniversary year of the birth of an independent Czechoslovakia, the people of Ireland wish you and your compatriots, our friends and our partners, every success now and in the days to come.
Distinguished Guests, I now invite you to join me in a toast:
- To the health and happiness of President Klaus and Mrs. Klausová;
- To peace and prosperity for the people of the Czech Republic; and
- To continued friendship between the peoples of Ireland and the Czech Republic.
Sláinte, Na zdraví