REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE IMMIGRANT COUNCIL OF IRELAND CONFERENCE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE IMMIGRANT COUNCIL OF IRELAND CONFERENCE ‘DIVERSE VIEWS ON DIVERSITY...'
Dia daiobh a dhaoine uaisle. Tá an-athas orm bheith anseo libh ag Acadamh Ríoga na hÉiréann. Míle buíochas daoibh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte cairdiúil thug sibh dom, anseo inniu.
Good morning everyone. It is good to be back in the Royal Irish Academy for this seminar on ‘Diverse Views on Diversity’, not the first time the Academy has hosted an event that invites us to carefully scrutinise the increasingly mosaic nature of our society and how well we are coping with diversity. My thanks to the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and particularly to Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, for inviting me and to each one of you for making this issue your business, maybe even your mission.
The American poet, Maya Angelou, once said ‘We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their colour.’ That is not simply an image, it is a philosophy. It is a way of understanding the individual human person’s place in the broader society that is shared root and branch with the founding values of our country. It finds expression in the Proclamation’s lovely words about cherishing the children of the nation equally. It finds expression in our constitution where every citizen is regarded as equal and where the dignity and freedom of the individual is assured. These words are not just words, they are intended to be a way of living, of acting and of thinking. People are meant to see them at work in their lives, in how they are dealt with by the State and by their neighbours. People are meant to put them to work in their lives in how they treat others. It’s a simple philosophy of mutual respect and tolerance that is intolerant of prejudice, bigotry and racism and it is a philosophy that has come into its own in these contemporary times when its robustness, its embeddedness has been tested by the many newcomers who are now part of our communities and our citizenry. Ireland’s future will be crafted by men, women and children whose families have been here for generations and families who are newcomers from all over the world. To the extent that they work well and comfortably together, ours will be a good place, a safe and healthy place for all our children to grow up and to live.
We already know that it is possible for groups of people to live side by side in dangerous ignorance of one another – just look at the story of Northern Ireland. Our history of being emigrants in other countries over generations has taught us about the courage and resilience of emigrants, their invaluable contribution to new homelands, their generosity to their birthplaces, their loneliness and the awful impact on them of deliberate exclusion or demonisation.
Now Ireland has the chance and the challenge to do things differently from those other countries where migrants live in parallel societies, where people are ghettoised, consigned to poverty and feel unwelcome. During our economic boom we became, for the first time, a country of net inward migration with migrants from almost 200 countries. Through the current economic retrenchment some have left but many have stayed for they came to make Ireland their home for the long term. Their future is here. Their children’s future is here and their genius, skill and hard work will impact hugely on that future. I meet the children regularly in our schools where their full embrace of Irish culture is outstanding. It says a lot about them and about the openness and attractiveness of Irish culture that they are so curious about Irish culture while continuing to value, practice and showcase to the rest of us their own language and traditions.
In these times of economic retrenchment where the story of our export sector is a shining light of hope, it is worth reminding ourselves as we work hard to sell goods and services across the globe and to break into new markets, that for the first time in our history we have a cadre of Irish citizens who are steeped in the languages, customs and practices of many of those countries we aim to do business with. That is a very robust platform with which to court those markets and with which to attract inward investors who are looking for a wide variety of skills in today’s competitive global economy. Our emigrants strengthen us for the future that we face and Ireland has a vested interest in ensuring that Ireland of the welcomes is what they experience in their homes, streets, workplaces, classrooms and communities.
A society where people feel they must lose their ethnic or cultural identity in order to ‘fit in’ does not meet the high standards of tolerance or inclusivity that we have set for ourselves and insisted on for ourselves around the world and indeed even in our own country. Our Irish immigrants took with them their music, language, sport, literature, culture, religion and traditions. Their influence in every sphere of life in many parts of the world is incalculable and phenomenal. The stories of those who have emigrated to Ireland will be no less remarkable.
I hope your deliberations here will help all of us who share this country to prepare the ground well for a shared future of comfortable diversity and easy, organic integration. Each individual has it in his or her hands to prepare that ground by being interested in each other’s wellbeing. Each street and community has the opportunity and responsibility to try to draw everyone into friendship and good neighbourliness. We want ours to be a society of people who care about each other not a society of strangers. It cannot happen if we do nothing but the rewards for getting it right are peace on our streets, peace in our hearts, commitment to one another, commitment to our country and the fulfillment of our ambition to be a Republic of equals.
I wish you every success with this important conference and thank you all for the excellent work you are doing in ensuring that all those who come to our shores receive a sustained and a nurturing, traditional Irish céad míle fáilte.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.