REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF NETWORK IRELAND “DEFINING SUCCESS…”
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF NETWORK IRELAND "DEFINING SUCCESS: HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN WE'VE MADE IT?"
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
It’s good to be here and to have the opportunity to meet with you all today as we celebrate the work of your organisation, Network Ireland, and the culmination of this year’s activities at this vibrant annual conference. My thanks to Alison Herbert for the kind invitation to share today with you.
But before I begin, please permit me to let you in on something I discovered about the theme of your conference, ‘defining success’ - I actually have the definition. In preparing for coming here I ‘Googled’ for a definition of the word 'success' and found the following:
‘There is success when ‘the function may optionally move forward or “consume” one or more characters of the input string supplied to it’.
So now we know! Isn’t the Internet just wonderful at clarifying matters? But before you cancel the conference entirely, I would like to say a few additional words.
Network Ireland has grown significantly over the years since it was established and as it has grown, it has provided more and more opportunities for business women, women who work in the professions and women engaged in the arts to meet and share each other’s experiences in a welcoming, friendly environment. Local branches of Network Ireland offer a range of events, some of a serious nature, some less so and more relaxing but all very reinvigorating, with the key purpose of enabling women to network and to grow in their knowledge and self belief, two characteristics which are essential if we are to set and achieve our goals in every facet of our lives today.
We all know that the pace of life today is frantic and it takes a lot of planning and co‑ordination to make the space to meet colleagues and friends. Formal networks and networking are therefore an important feature of modern life and make a valuable contribution to how we do our work. It may be that a networking conversation leads to an exchange of contact names; it may lead to an exchange of good practice in a particular field. It may offer words of comfort or words of wisdom. Such contact is central to our human condition and therefore any organisation which facilitates and encourages it is to be commended, for no two in the room have the same talents or insights, and so we each have something utterly unique to offer to one another.
The branches of Network Ireland established around Ireland, and those planned for the future, will give many more women opportunities to avail of expert help, experience and advice as it is needed. And isn’t it a great development that, through e-technology, business opportunities are available in almost every corner of Ireland? More and more we hear of people who have established careers in the most remote locations, and working very flexible hours, facilitated through modern information and communications technologies. It has been good for so many women who have to strive so hard to balance work and family life – women who want, need and have career expectations but also want, need a functional family life too. And as we women know it is a struggle to find that often-elusive balance.
Equality legislation and enhanced work-sharing arrangements in the workplace have transformed working life for many women giving realistic prospects of good careers where previously they were limited. And it was badly needed, for a dynamic and hugely successful economy such as ours in recent years demands a plentiful workforce. To effectively deny or limit the contribution of half our population’s workforce at a time when their skills and talents and genius were so badly needed made no business sense, no common sense, no sense at all. That imbalance is being addressed and it is recognised that the huge increase in the number of women in work has been central to our economic growth and prosperity.
Now that that imbalance is less and less in evidence, the other major imbalance in the world of employment is making slow progress. We have seen Irish women rise to prominence in many fields both nationally and internationally but we acknowledge also that too few women rise to the top in business and industry. This mirrors experience in many, if not most other countries and it will clearly require further concerted effort before men and women achieve true equality of opportunity in the world of work. But it is worth remembering that for women this journey has only just begun to gather momentum and so we are still at the start of new times.
International research shows that men use networking to great effect as they climb the corporate ladder. Network Ireland offers an opportunity to you, its members, to build strong effective networks, to fine-tune networking skills to assist you in advancing on the corporate ladder. Its mentoring and its encouragement are helping to create a new generation of leaders with enhanced management skills, a commitment to personal career development, and that elusive self-belief that has stopped so many women in their career tracks. We may not be able to define success in perfect terms but we know the feel of frustrated ambition, of under-achievement, of being kept behind unfair barriers. We know the landscape of the past and how it held us back as individuals and as a society. We can feel the pulse of change, of chances that were not there before, of freedom to choose, of space to make our own. The signs of women’s success are written all over modern Ireland, in the story of contemporary Ireland itself the greatest success story of the European Union. Success is now defining us. Network Ireland is entitled to claim its share of credit for this new Ireland. It is no perfect paradise but it is better than anything experienced by any other generation of women in Ireland’s history. We have an ambition as a people to make ours a truly fully-inclusive society, where no-one’s talents are wasted and where all have an opportunity to contribute to making their own lives the fullest possible and making our family, community and civic life as rich and life-enhancing as we can. We will know we have made it when we can say that that ambition is a lived reality. In the days before networks the old Irish seanfhocail said – two shortens the journey. The evidence is in that this network has done precisely that – shortened the journey to new and ambitious destinations for our women and for our country. That is success by any standards.
Well done and keep doing it.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.