REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE GRADUATION CEREMONY FOR A GROUP OF TRAVELLER WOMEN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE GRADUATION FOR A GROUP OF TRAVELLER WOMEN RECEIVING QUALIFICATIONS IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
Cuireann sé athas ar mo chroí bheith anseo libh inniú agus tá mé thar buíoch daoibh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom.
This is wonderful occasion and a real privilege to be a part of it. I would like to thank Caitriona Kelly for the kind invitation and I warmly congratulate the traveller women graduates whose hard work, commitment and success brings us together in celebration of their achievements and in pride.
The certificates they bring home today tell of women, busy women, with families and responsibilities, often living in the difficult conditions that are part of traveller life, who nonetheless found the courage and the energy to go back to school and to pursue this impressive qualification in Primary Health Care. We know from the certificatesawarded that they achieved high standards but there are other things not written in those certificates that we know about these women. We know how strong they are, how determined and how clever. We know that they want to use their talents and gifts the best they can, to build up their knowledge and their skills so that not only will they be strong but their children, their community and our country will be strong - made strong and resilient through strong, informed capable citizens.
Today’s Ireland is going through a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic growth. We are entitled to be proud that a hard working people have reversed the tide of emigration and created a culture of opportunity. Education has played a huge role in changing Ireland’s future but our truest success as a people is tested by how many people remain on the margins as spectators watching others enjoy their place at the centre of things. We have an ambition to be a republic of true equals, a place where equality is lived not simply written of or talked about, where diversity is respected, difference is celebrated and where Travellers have access to every opportunity for education, jobs, long and healthy lives and a meaningful part in the prosperity of our dynamic country.
Educate a mother, they say, and you educate a family and it is true. Our graduates today will have a huge impact on their families and communities. Our travelling community is small but it has many serious problems to confront, major health and sanitation problems leading to a short life span, interrupted education leading to illiteracy and underachievement, relationship problems with the wider settled community leading to alienation, exclusion, misunderstanding and fear. Our graduates have acknowledged the role they can play, and education can play, in facing down these problems and making life better for the next generation. Shouldering the responsibility of contributing to your own personal and family development will bring new confidence, create new traveller leaders, articulate advocates for a unique culture that adds its own language, history and distinctiveness to the many threaded tapestry of Irish life. Time and time again I meet people who, as adults, have gone back to school and every one of them tells me of the massive difference it has made in their lives, helping them to blossom, to grow new skills, to uncover talents they never knew they had, to become happier and more fulfilled in their lives. I hope that is how you feel, as if a marvellous part of you has just been discovered for the first time.
With your qualifications, with your righteous pride and newfound voice you are shaping a very different future for travellers. You are helping to break the cycle of disadvantage that has kept so many travellers from achieving their full potential. I am proud to live through times when we have travellers among our elected local public representatives, among our university graduates, our President’s Gold Awardees. I hope to live to see traveller T.D’s and Senators, traveller doctors and lawyers, as a new generation of travelling children, inspired by today’s graduates, move confidently and easily from the margins into the mainstream.
I thank all those who have helped to make this project such a great success. The organisers and tutors, the funders and support agencies are all entitled to praise and thanks today but centre stage are the people without whom the project could not have worked at all - the traveller women who saw the opportunity and took it. We salute each of you on this special day in your lives and in the lives of your families and we wish you the very best for the future as you move from the role of trainee to employment as Community Health Workers.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.