REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF AN HONORARY DOCTOR OF LAWS OTAGO UNIVERSITY
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF AN HONORARY DOCTOR OF LAWS OTAGO UNIVERSITY, DUNEDIN WEDNESDAY, 31 OCTOBER
Vice Chancellor Skegg, Distinguished Guests
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
Tá an áthas orm bheith anseo inniú in san gcathar fíor ceilteach, fíor ghaeleach, Dun Eideann.
What a privilege it is to use two of the world’s ancient and beautiful languages on the occasion of becoming an honorary alumnus of the distinguished Otago University, the Grand Dame, the doyenne of New Zealand’s university sector. I am very grateful to you Vice-Chancellor and to the University and to Professor Leach for her lovely words.
This is my first visit to Dunedin but since my granny lived in Dunedin Park in Belfast for fifty years and my own family home on the shores of Lough Edin, is also called Dun Edin I feel more than at home. Just as the name of my home is link to a far off past when the twelfth century St. Eidin founded a church close by, so too the beautiful Gaelic name of this city, links you to the Scottish settlers drawn here by the discovery of gold back in 1861. They and not a few Irish helped give the city a recognisably Celtic flavour which survives to this day not least in the person of Professor Leach whose distinguished ancestor was a famous son of my birth city Belfast, Henry Joy McCracken whose courageous fight for Irish freedom in the United Irishmen’s uprising of 1798 set in train historic consequences which resonate profoundly still.
Some of those consequences impacted strongly on New Zealand and its neighbour Australia for the squabbles of religion and politics which kept Ireland in turmoil for centuries were not washed away by the miles and miles of ocean but were instead packed in the luggage of the emigrants from Ireland to your shores. New Zealand had its Orange Lodges and its Hibernian Clubs but the gradual emergence of a strong and shared sense of a New Zealand identity allowed those old divisions to fade, to be reconciled here at least if not in Ireland until the present day. It is particularly moving to see here today representatives of the Irish communities in Otago, Canterbury and Southland. I hope they can take pride in how the witness of their lives has helped the long but now very hopeful journey towards reconciliation in Ireland.
Indeed New Zealand has always been a good friend to us on that journey, from the days almost a century ago when Irish Parliamentary leaders such as John and William Redmond and John Dillon visited here on a very successful mission to raise funds and support for Home rule in Ireland to more recent times when the New Zealand government became a staunch supporter of the International Fund for Ireland and the Peace Process.
Today the fruits of your interest and encouragement are to be seen in the transformed landscape I have left behind me. The once fraught relationship between the Dublin and Westminster Governments has metamorphosed into a strong, friendly collegial partnership. The relationships between Ireland North and South once characterised by deep mistrust are moving rapidly in the direction of good neighbourliness and collaboration across many areas of common interest and benefit. The deep divisions within Northern Ireland are being daily transcended and reduced by a new administration made up of old and sworn enemies, now working together for all the people of Northern Ireland.
These are days of miracle some say. They are certainly days of grace and hope, and days from which New Zealand is far from disconnected but rather strongly implicated in. Our Irish family around New Zealand has made us proud and given us self-belief even through some of the most difficult periods of history. We are proud that twelve of the thirty eight Premiers and Prime Ministers of New Zealand have been Irish or of Irish background, proud of the considerable contribution made by Irish men and Irish women to every facet of New Zealand’s civic life and strength, proud that New Zealand’s highly regarded education system developed as it did thanks to the fierce debate between two Irishmen of predictably opposing views, Sir Charles Christopher Bowen and Bishop Patrick Moran.
Today Ireland has a new narrative. The days of mass emigration, endemic poverty high unemployment and underachievement have vanished. Now the tide of migrant’s flows into Ireland as Irish emigrants return and new migrants join them attracted by the opportunities that abound there. Ireland is today a well educated, high achieving, prosperous society and the most important key to its transformation was and still is education. When we educated only a small percentage of our population we realised only a small proportion of our potential. Today with free first level, second level and third level education and with massive government investment in doctoral and post-doctoral research, the scene is set for Ireland, at peace and prosperous, to reveal her best narrative ever and at home.
In this country where fully one-fifth of the population can claim Irish descent, your Irish Studies programme, the only such undergraduate programme in New Zealand, offers students a marvellous opportunity to explore the Irish heritage of New Zealand and to learn more about another one of the contemporary world’s most exciting, dynamic islands, a place with a story of success on two fronts - peace and prosperity - to lift the hearts and hopes of the many millions world wide who are still wondering if their day will ever come. The establishment here of the Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies thanks to the very welcome generosity and foresight of Eamon Cleary and of the University and the New Zealand Government will add a vital new layer of scholarly access, research and curiosity which will be yet another bridge between Ireland and New Zealand and between our peoples. With so eminent an academic as Peter Kuch at its head, I know that the success of Irish Studies at Otago is assured.
Vice Chancellor Skegg, in awarding me this honour, in making me so welcome here on this special day you too are helping renew and refresh those long standing ties of kinship, and affection, of history and of contemporary friendship, which characterise the unique bond between Ireland and New Zealand. Each generation adds its own chapter to the story of that bond. We add ours today and I have no doubt that in the years ahead the distillation of all these ties will be a formidable partnership and witness in the world of two geographically distant nations, close in values and in vision working together to solidify at home and generate abroad the peace with equality and justice, the widespread opportunity and prosperity that characterises our shared commitment to the innate dignity of every human being.
I thank you again and all your colleagues for the warm welcome you have shown me and for this much-appreciated honour.