REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE AWARD OF THE LITERARY AND DEBATING SOCIETY PRESIDENT’S MEDAL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE AWARD OF THE LITERARY AND DEBATING SOCIETY PRESIDENT’S MEDAL
Dia dhíbh a chairde, cuireann sé áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu agus táim thar a bheith buíoch daoibh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom. Martin and I are both delighted to be here for it was through our respective schools debating societies that we first met in Belfast over forty years ago, so debating societies have a special place in our hearts. Martin will also concede that I invariably walked away with the medal on the days when we met back then and today I feel specially honoured to accept the President’s Medal of NUIG’s prestigious Literary and Debating Society, though I am relieved that I did not have to compete to achieve it.
In many ways this award, with its emphasis on the work of peace-building through bridge-building, harks directly back to those student days of the late 1960s for they marked for both of us the start of our adulthood and the start of the Northern troubles.
It was also the beginning of a very deep enduring and personal debate about how we should respond to the developing violence, its historic causes and the culture of sectarian and political conflict which we had not created but had inherited. The violence was encountered directly and painfully in our lives. We lived with it, not adjacent to it or removed from it but enveloped by it. It challenged our values, our beliefs, the principles we chose to live by, the ambitions we had for ourselves and our country; it distilled in both of us an unwavering abhorrence of violence, of injustice, oppression and inequality and it forged a determination to do what we could in our lives to make things better.
The social demography of Northern Ireland is dominated by religiously-denominated ghettoes. The vast majority of people lived then and continue to live in areas which are largely either Catholic/nationalist/republican or Protestant/unionist/loyalist. Martin and I both grew up in largely Protestant areas where we were part of a small Catholic minority, where despite separate schooling we had good Protestant friends and neighbours. We knew from first principles the goodness and decency that existed in the hearts of both sides and we also knew of the dangerous estrangement, the astonishing capacity both sides had to live in ignorance of each other’s perspectives and identities.
I do not need to rehearse the baleful consequences of that estrangement except to say that the Troubles I lived through were not that different from similar outcroppings of politico-sectarianism which had occurred and recurred for generations. Since the foundation of this Society in Famine Ireland in 1846, the archives of history chronicle regular episodes of violence which are evidence of a deeply fractured and unreconciled people who physically shared this island but shared little else.
This Society came into existence in the short years before the death of the greatest orator of them all, Daniel O’Connell, the man who tried valiantly to persuade the people of this island to resolve their many and justified grievances by dialogue, debate and constitutional politics. He died, broken by the famine and though successful in his attempts to promote the human and civil rights of the oppressed in Ireland and elsewhere in the world, the gravitational pull of endemic oppression continued to provoke its opposite and predictable reaction of endemic violence, until this generation, when O’Connell’s conviction that persistent peaceful persuasion had a remarkable game-changing power came into its own and vindicated itself magnificently.
With so much economic worry and disappointment consuming minds and hearts these days, it is very easy to overlook the singular success of this generation in establishing a fair and working peace process which has transformed relations between the communities in Northern Ireland, between North and South and between the peoples of Ireland and Great Britain. Relationships which were once very fraught and difficult are now characterised by a growing collegiality and engagement which would have seemed preposterously impossible a decade ago. Yet peace has come to pass – a peace underpinned by a legal architecture and owned by the overwhelming will of the people tested in twin referenda held on the same day both North and South. This is no interruption of old hostilities as with previous peacemaking efforts; this is the start of a newly laid road to a very different future which will change your lives, your options and your opinions. It is the defining imprint of this, the most educated generation ever to inhabit this island, the most creative, the most willing to compromise intelligently and generously, the most determined to reveal the power of democracy, mutual respect and parity of esteem. This peace is already transformational. It is a work in progress, a long and relentless work in progress but in the past couple of weeks we celebrated another important milestone when the longest period of power-sharing government came to a gentle, natural end when its term of office ran out.
The challenge for your generation is to sustain and consolidate this hard-won prize, with no less hope and determination than was required to first open a space for peace some 20 years ago and to fully secure this historic opportunity for partnership and reconciliation between the traditions, the neighbours who share this island. No-one’s life was ever made miserable by having good neighbours and our future wellbeing lies in ensuring that a culture of good neighbourliness grows strong and robust so that this peace can flourish and reveal its fullest potential.
The peace will help us through these tough economic times for it provides a solid platform for practical and sustained everyday cooperation across a huge range of areas where it makes sense to work together. This peace was built by people like you who were not afraid to stand up and argue their case openly, accountably, publicly, people who believe in the power of ideas, the possibility of persuasion and the capacity of the human person to change and change dramatically.
This is the season of change – we have a beautiful spring, a new government with a strong mandate, elections in the North and though life is very far from perfect and we have many problems to solve, the problem-solvers, the peace-makers have triumphed over the longest, the worst and the sorriest of all our problems, the absence of peace.
We have no way of knowing what lies ahead of us, what judgements we are called to make, any more than Martin and I did when we first met in 1969, but we will both always be grateful that already through our debating societies we had been introduced to the world of persuasion through the gift of passionate words and honest debate. They gave us a formidable preparation for the life that brought us here today. I am sure this Society will do no less for each of you.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.