REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT ABU DHABI HIGHER COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY, UAE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT ABU DHABI HIGHER COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY, UAE WEDNESDAY 4 FEBRUARY, 2009.
Minister Martin, Ambassador, ladies and gentlemen,
Good afternoon everyone. My husband Martin and I thank you for that warm and generous welcome. Let me in turn extend personal, heartfelt greeting to each and every one of you, and the greetings and warmest good wishes of the people of Ireland.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to be with you today along with the Minister of Education of the United Arab Emirates, Dr Hanif Hassan. What a great pleasure and privilege it is to be here to mark a very special anniversary in the successful history of the Higher Colleges of Technology. Traditionally, in Ireland and indeed throughout many other parts of the world, a twenty-first birthday marked the attainment of adulthood. In a similar vein you could say that this birthday marks a coming-of-age for the Higher Colleges of Technology network for, from very humble and small beginnings, they have seen the most remarkable growth. In fact they have grown into one of the greatest success stories of the United Arab Emirates. Now its seventeen colleges of world-class distinction and its sixteen thousand plus students are an integral part of the dynamic which will be the future of the Emirates.
This, then, is a day of righteous pride, celebration and congratulation. These twenty-one years of growth and development, of high achievement in teaching, scholarship and research, of physical and intellectual expansion, of investment in students and staff and country, none of these things happened by coincidence but by commitment. Your graduates have been and are your most formidable ambassadors. They are young men and women from all backgrounds, able-bodied and those with disability alike, poor and wealthy alike. They have each benefited enormously from the opportunities opened up to them by their studies. Their country has benefited enormously from their skill, confidence and qualifications. Nelson Mandela once remarked that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” and indeed your own renowned poet and Imam, Al Shafie, perceptively wrote that education and knowledge raise houses that have neither foundations, roots nor base, while ignorance and lack of knowledge, destroy houses of pride and glory.
The outstanding vision and leadership of your late and much-loved President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, served as an inspiration for the Higher Colleges of Technology. With Sheikh Zayed’s strong and unwavering support, His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, Minister of Higher Education and Research, a forward-looking man of great imagination and determination, was handed the reins as Chancellor of this fledgling education enterprise. He has steered the HCT, with graciousness, distinction and determination, through a period of considerable change and increasing challenge for higher education throughout the world. From the outset, Sheikh Nahayan envisioned an education system that would cultivate, in new generations of Emiratis, values that would serve them well in a globalised and ever-changing world - the values of open enquiry, critical thinking, personal integrity, intellectual honesty and tolerance for the ideas of others. I congratulate him on his formidable and enduring contribution and wish him good health, success and happiness in the future.
At this special time in the life of the HCT, I wish also to extend my congratulations to Dr. Tayeb Kamali. Tayeb, as Vice Chancellor of the HCT, on your very able shoulders falls the exciting task of directing and co-ordinating the operation of seventeen colleges, ensuring the highest quality teaching and research, attracting the best calibre students and staff, liaising with colleges throughout the world including Ireland and, of course, most important of all making the lived college experience a humanly good and meaningful one. I wish you well Tayeb as you lead HCT through its third decade of educational excellence at the service of students and country.
It is particularly good to be able today to acknowledge the strong business, trade and education relationships that have grown and flourished between our two nations for many years, defying geography but underlining the benefits of promoting such bilateral cooperation spanning an ever-increasing range of areas from construction services to engineering, architecture, financial services, IT and education. Those growing links have been further underlined by the decision of the Irish government, just announced by Minister Martin, that Ireland will be opening an Embassy here in the UAE. We have also seen tourism between our countries blossom greatly, assisted by the welcome decision of Etihad, your national airline, to fly directly and daily between Abu Dhabi and Dublin. Their most recent link-up with the West of Ireland through Aer Arann offers even greater future prospects and opportunities. Moreover, Tourism Ireland, which markets the island of Ireland, has recently announced its decision to open a base here in Abu Dhabi.
Each of these important connections between us was made by human endeavour and from it has grown, not just investment and prosperity, but an abiding friendship. Some 4,000 Irish men and women live and work here. They bring the face, heart and soul of Ireland into their daily lives here, allowing their friends, neighbours and colleagues in the Emirates to get the measure of us and to get to know us and our country. They are, of course, great ambassadors for the Emirates in Ireland, building the links of family and friendship which open us up to each other’s rich histories and heritages. They also help us to grow the business partnerships and alliances which strengthen both our economies and equip us to make the best of good times and face into the more difficult times.
The global economic chill that has spread like a flu virus, leaving few countries unscarred, challenges us to dig deep and to gather our strengths as we navigate these uncharted waters. Our two nations have known tough times before and perseverance in adversity is in our DNA. You have made of your country one of the most cosmopolitan and dynamic economies in the world. Ireland has been transformed from a protectionist, low-tech, rural economy into a leading knowledge-based globalised economy. Just as we need our people’s sense of community and common focus to get us through these difficult days, we also know that we need good friends and partners in the wider world. That is why we look to the strengths that will carry us beyond recession, to the strategic alliances, joint ventures, collaborative research and development projects, the innovation and creativity from which will come the new-generation ideas and concepts of future development and prosperity. Those of us who are veterans of other recessions know that this too will pass but we have to help it along.
In the calmer waters of tomorrow’s new economy - and hopefully with the more credible, chastened and robust financial systems, which will be born out of these testing times - nations will be vying with each other for the competitive advantage that comes from an alliance of good judgement with entrepreneurialism, creativity, adaptability, good training and education. The young graduates of your colleges are the seed capital of that future, just as our young people are ours. Educated and qualified to the highest international standards, experienced in the world of sophisticated technologies and wiser to the dangers that provoked today’s economic crisis, this generation needs to be given its head and to be encouraged in leadership. Our mistakes distil into their wisdom. Their wisdom distils to a more intuitive understanding of the interconnectedness of our variegated world and its need for a unifying vision capable of dealing with the problems the world faces: how to feed all its hungry; how to overcome disease and disability; how to meet the energy needs of all its demands; how to protect our planet; how to build and sustain peace; how to prevent conflict; how to make our earth a humanly decent place to live for everyone.
At this watershed moment in our global history our students need to have the temerity to be discoverers of new ways of doing things. They need to have the power to discriminate between past practices which are worth protecting and past practices which are not. Investment in their powers of discrimination, curiosity, enquiry and inventiveness will in time produce the answers we seek from science and technology, from social, political, medical and behavioural science, ethics, law, philosophy and metaphysics.
Times of crisis test us and open up opportunities to think again. It was during the major recession in the 1930s, revolutionary new industries such as consumer electronics and plastics were created. The turbulent mid-1970s saw the birth of the personal computer. Soaring oil prices, out-of-control inflation and plummeting stock markets did not stop the young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs from setting up revolutionary new businesses. Somewhere in this downturn are the names and life-changing innovations which we will admire and talk about tomorrow.
Twenty-one years ago when the UAE itself was barely twenty years in existence, the founders of the Higher Colleges of Technology had the great wisdom to provide for the emerging and critical manpower needs of their young nation. Through its staff and students, HCT has become a powerful engine of social, political and economic change for individuals, their families, their communities and their country. Now it has come of age. Now it has the gathering momentum of twenty-one years of accomplishments and achievements, of confidence and critical mass. Even in these uncertain times we can be sure that the best is yet to come as HCT gives its distinctive educational leadership. I wish its staff and students every success and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have been part of the celebration of your stellar twenty first birthday.
Thank you.