REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT AN IRISH COMMUNITY RECEPTION THE UNITED IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT AN IRISH COMMUNITY RECEPTION THE UNITED IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE, SAN FRANCISCO, THURSDAY, 11 DEC
Thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you to the Board of the Centre for hosting us so well this evening. Thank you also to Mayor Newsom for honouring me with the keys to this city which I first grew to love as a student working here on a J1 visa over thirty years ago. The welcome has not changed in the intervening years and what a privilege it is to renew again the historic ties between the people of Ireland and the people of this great city by the bay.
Many of our emigrant Irish, among them my own family, made their lives in this beautiful city. They became proud and hard-working Americans but never lost their essential Irishness. They brought here a legendary love of life and determination in the face of adversity. They brought Ireland’s music, dance, sport and rich cultural and spiritual heritage. They kept faith with Ireland through her many generations of hard times and they invested deeply in the peace and prosperity which have transformed Ireland today.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who served as America’s delegate to the United Nations, which was founded here in San Francisco, once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. Here the Irish dreamt of better lives for their children and they longed for a better life in the land they had so reluctantly left behind. Many went to their graves still dreaming and hoping. Now, in this generation, their descendants meet in very different times as citizens of two egalitarian democracies whose people enjoy freedom, prosperity and opportunity. We in Ireland are so grateful for the many ways in which our American-Irish family has helped us to achieve these transformed times, in particular the remarkable investment made in our peace process by the American Government and people. I hope that the future we build in Ireland will truly honour all the hopes and dreams and sacrifices of our emigrant family. I also hope that we will all work to maintain our strong sense of clan, our deep connections to one another. We now have the communication and transport technologies to keep us in close and regular contact with one another and to help us develop those living links of culture, sport, research and business that benefit us all and make us community to one another.
This centre is testimony to the power of community and especially to the big hearts of the volunteers who built it. It is a focal point, a gathering place for community, a place for friendships to flourish and for strangers to be welcomed in the great Irish tradition of fáilte/welcome. I certainly felt the warmth of that traditional céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes as soon as I came through the door. May it long flourish, for it is a virtue and a gift that was easily carried across the sea from Ireland and it has shown a remarkable endurance and shelf-life. May this place flourish and always be a place where the Irish tradition of care for one another is handed on like a precious baton, a sacred trust, from one generation to the next.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.