REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT NEW BORDER GENERATION 10TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT NEW BORDER GENERATION 10TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE HOLY TRINITY HERITAGE CENTRE
Dia dhíbh a chairde. I was very pleased to accept the invitation from Erin O’Connor project manager of New Border Generation to be with you here in beautiful Carlingford this morning. I am delighted to have this opportunity to honour the inspiring work of New Border Generation in the cause of peace and reconciliation and indeed the contribution to that end made by each and every one of you in your own communities.
The title of this conference '“Building Peace by Crossing Borders - Past, Present and Future” encapsulates the essence of New Border Generation. From humble beginnings as a local community organisation providing youth and community programmes for the Cooley Peninsula, you have over the years developed a vibrant cross-border and cross-community network of community groups and built up a wealth of resources and expertise, allowing these groups to draw on and learn from your experience. You have also provided safe spaces for dialogue and co-operation between Nationalist and Unionist communities in interface areas and a valuable safe introductory route for Loyalist communities to engage with groups from this part of the island. In doing so, you have not only crossed geographical and political borders, but also borders of hearts and minds – often a much more complex journey.
In providing support for New Border Generation’s current programmes in the areas of contact, co-operation and conflict transformation, the International Fund for Ireland and the Irish Government, through the Reconciliation Fund, have recognised their contribution to lasting peace and effective reconciliation. This support has helped New Border Generation to implement a dynamic programme of reconciliation activities, reaching into all communities where men and women, who, in the course of their everyday lives, might never have had the chance to meet one another, are given the opportunity to explore their history and learn about each other’s culture. The poet John Donne famously observed that “No man is an island, entire of itself”; instead, he recognised that every person was a thread in the rich tapestry of life, inherently and essentially connected to the rest of mankind. For many long dark years, our communities were cut off from each other by barriers of suspicion and hatred. It is so heartening today to see communities on both sides of the border, in rural areas and in towns, benefitting from New Border Generation’s help in tearing down those barriers, stretching out a hand and forging new connections. It is through this direct, constructive contact that you are “filling the centuries’ arrears”, one person at a time.
As George Bernard Shaw once said, “peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous”. You know that many issues, if left unresolved, could undermine our precious peace by keeping the cycle of hatred and violence open and for the past decade, you have worked to embed our peace ever deeper. You bravely tackle this problem through your programme of Contentious Issues training, helping those who were involved in or affected by the conflict to come to a deeper understanding of one another and of themselves. By giving individuals and community leaders the confidence they need to move forward in their own lives and to make a positive contribution to the transformation of wider society, you empower their communities and equip them with the tools they need to work side by side for a better and shared future.
All of us here today understand that true and lasting reconciliation cannot be achieved easily or overnight. It is a process and while the process is underway and making manifest progress there are plenty of reminders that there is much unfinished business. The murders in Massereene and Craigavon, as well as sectarian attacks and unrest in some areas show us that the dying embers of the tired old culture of conflict can still fan to a flame that is capable of inflicting considerable damage and engendering the poisonous doubt that holds some back from fully embracing the peace process.
Our challenge to keep on peacemaking and peace building today is not made easier by the sudden change in the economic climate, for those who are most estranged from the peace are often to be found among those who are also most estranged from prosperity and opportunity. It was the International Fund for Ireland which was among the first to recognise the toxic connection between that estrangement and the hatreds that fuelled cyclical sectarianism. I am delighted that Denis Rooney, the Chair of the International Fund for Ireland, is with us today and to have this chance to acknowledge how utterly essential was the work undertaken by the funds in facilitating divided and marginalised communities to break free of under-achievement and mistrust, to achieve success, to grow in confidence and to gain from first principles a firm insight into what they could accomplish if they could work in partnership with the neighbours and communities from whom history and politics had separated them. You helped harness energies that had once been wasted in negativity and to put them to practical, positive peace-building.
The Fund’s donors - the United States, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are owed an enormous debt of gratitude for the huge support they have given over many years not just to New Border Generation but also a raft of other life-enhancing projects. The work of those programmes including New Border Generation is in real terms only just beginning for we are witnessing the death throes of a culture of conflict and at the same time seed-bedding the emergence of a culture of consensus, good neighbourliness and above all peace with equity and justice. The new culture is emerging strongly and rapidly but we are still in its opening chapters and the dead weight of history has the capacity to drag us back if we allow the momentum to relax. So we continue to need champions, advocates and volunteers to be the hands of the work of peacemaking. You have been blessed in the quality of the people who have committed to that work, many of whom are here with us this morning. I congratulate the Board of New Border Generation and Project Manager Erin O’Connor, Mairéad Hearty and their colleagues on the good that has come from your work so far. From a small local project on the beautiful Cooley peninsula, you have become the centre of a thriving cross-border network of men and women whose experience of personal change has made them alive to the potential of peace. They know that friendships, networks, partnerships, teams, good neighbours are sources of energy that can lift the weight of history enough to let the future in. I know that you will continue the invaluable work that is being done and I take this opportunity to wish you all well with those endeavours into the future. Go n-eirí an bothar libh go léir. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.