REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS OF THE FOUNDATION OF NEWBRIDGE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS OF THE FOUNDATION OF NEWBRIDGE COLLEGE, CO. KILDARE
Cuireann sé an-athás orm bheith libh inniu chun an ócaid stairiúil seo a cheiliúradh libh. Tá ceiliúradh céad caoga bliain an-speisialta, go mórmhór nuair is ceiliúradh é ar thraidisiún uasal oideachais.
It gives me great pleasure to be here with you all today and I would like to thank the Board of Governors for their kind invitation to share in the 150th Anniversary celebrations of the Foundation of Newbridge College. I would also like to say a heartfelt thank you for the warm welcome you have just given me.
I am not the first President to celebrate important dates in the calendar of this school. President Sean T. O’Ceallaigh joined in your centenary celebrations back in 1952, as did the Taoiseach of the day, Eamonn De Valera, long before most of you were born and I feel privileged to follow in their footsteps as you celebrate another great milestone in the history of this school.
It isn’t easy for us to imagine what life was like a century and a half ago when the Dominican Fathers first founded this school. We have been living through the best of times. The first pupils lived through the worst. Born into Ireland’s grim Famine times they were not to know it in their generation that the history of Ireland would be changed forever. And not just Ireland. Waves of Irish emigrants, some of them pupils of this school would change the histories of adopted homelands in America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and many other parts of the world. Each generation lived through very different times and mostly it has to be said those times were grim, for Ireland was a poor and anguished place for a large part of those one hundred and fifty years. Many of your predecessors lived through those times when war was ever-present, when education was the prerogative of the rich, when talent was wasted through oppression and lack of opportunity. They never knew the joy of achieving their fullest potential or living in a country which was able to realise its truest potential. Many of them sacrificed their own ambitions for themselves so that Ireland would one day be a country people did not have to emigrate from, a country which could feed, clothe, house and educate its people, a country where the gifts of every person are helped to blossom and put at the service of the human person, of community and country. They shared the dream of the Dominican Fathers that if we wanted a peaceful and prosperous Ireland of equals then the journey had to start somewhere and they knew the best place to start was with education.
Here in this place thousands and thousands of young people were helped to go a journey into themselves, to find out their strengths and weaknesses, to grow in knowledge, to develop skills and talents that only a good teacher can see and encourage. They left here with the confidence that comes not just from success in examinations but the confidence that comes from being people of vision, of character that had been tried and tested, people of decent values, the kind of people who build up a country and give it hope.
Most of those who came through Newbridge are not household names but they became good parents, good colleagues, good friends, good neighbours, the essential seed-corn of a humanly decent place to live. They are remembered where it matters, in the hearts and homes of those whose lives they enriched by their presence. And of course there were those who made the headlines too, for Newbridge can recite a litany of excellence, of leadership and achievement in every field of human endeavour whether on the sports-fields, in politics, the arts, in music, in business, the church or in that essential field of voluntary work. So there have been lots of happy days when you celebrated the accomplishments of Newbridge’s present and past pupils. There have been days of shared sorrows too, among them the untimely death last year of former Principal, Gerard Skelly.
The story of every pupil, every member of staff, of parents, friends of the College and of the community, together weave a complex and remarkable tapestry. Each life, each story, is an utterly and unrepeatable thread bringing its own texture, colour and vibrancy to the tapestry. Put all the threads together and you see life as God intended it to be, in all its individuality, in all its interdependence, a place where we need each other in order to truly know ourselves, a place where every human being counts and each is given the chance to create his or her legacy of goodness.
Today’s students are by far the luckiest generation yet, enjoying a Newbridge College which is the best it has ever been, in an Ireland that has taken itself from being a third world country within living memory, to one of the top ten wealthiest nations in the world, a country which we are told, has the potential to become the world’s wealthiest country in a matter of years. One of our Bishops preaching at this years Commemoration Mass at Arbour Hill used an old Irish saying I had never heard until then but I think is apt today, “those who drink the water should remember with gratitude those who dug the well”. We do that today. We thank God for those whose foresight and commitment was the spine of this school for a century and a half and we thank God too for this new generation with their wonderful facilities, growing up in an achieving Ireland, for we know that they may well be the generation which for the first time ever on this island will know what it is like to live in an Ireland where poverty is history, where peace is reality and where a lived culture of equality and respect, of success and generosity are spoken of with envy the world over.
The pupils of this school will be part of that great adventure. Newbridge will ensure they are well prepared for the challenges ahead. There is a formidable partnership between the Newbridge team of pupils and staff, parents, past-pupils and community which works relentlessly to ensure that this school is always able to respond to the changing needs of the modern world. It is that team which today and in generations past spread the name of Newbridge College far and wide as a place to be proud of.
I wish you all days of friendship and fulfilment on your journey through the College. May pupils and staff inspire each other and help each other, with compassion, patience and respect, through all the ups and downs that school life and life itself brings. Vice-Principal Liam Armstrong deserves our special congratulations - I believe that he has given almost forty years of dedicated, committed service to the College. I thank Principal Pat O’Mahony for organising today’s visit, I thank all those who worked so hard to showcase the College at its best and I thank each of you for allowing me to be part of the Newbridge tapestry, the exceptional Newbridge Story.
Go raibh maith agaibh.