REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MARINE INSTITUTE HEADQUARTERS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MARINE INSTITUTE HEADQUARTERS, ORANMORE, GALWAY TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY 2011
Chairman, Jim Fennell, staff of the Marine Institute and guests,
Good afternoon and thank you for both the warm welcome and the invitation to visit the Marine Institute. 2011 is of course the 20th Anniversary of the Marine Institute Act (1991) and the beginning of the unique mission of this Institute as the lead state agency for marine research and development. You play a valuable role in ensuring the economic and job-creating potential of our marine resources are fully realised and that our marine environment is protected.
In such an idyllic setting as this, those who work here need no reminding of the massive marine resource Ireland has available to it. The work of the Institute these past twenty years has been to ensure that we have the infrastructure needed to put this great natural resource to work. Thanks to you we now have excellent laboratory facilities, both here and in our third level institutions, superb national research vessels and a growing community of marine industry innovators in both the public and private sectors.
Thanks also to you the quality and excellence of the Irish marine reseachers and the work of the Institute is recognised both nationally and internationally. We know this from the success of the marine science community in scoring impressive wins in EU funding competitions, from the contribution the Institute’s personnel make to many high-level national and international scientific organisations and advisory bodies; we know it from the contribution you help Ireland to make to European and global problem-solving around marine issues including understanding climate change; we know too how Ireland relies on your expertise and innovative skills which are so essential to the success of Ireland’s existing marine sector, to the protection of our marine environment and to the emergence of exciting new marine related industries and services.
Ireland’s seas and marine landscape are beloved of tourists, poets and artists. They have been our highways, our food store and yet they remain a very complex mystery to most of us. Today, the Marine Institute is leading the way in promoting public education initiatives that help us learn more about these enigmatic environments.
The Institute’s partnership with the Geological Survey of Ireland has given us the well-titled Real Map of Ireland. Mapping Ireland’s seabed was an invaluable but colossal undertaking over many years. I would like to congratulate all those involved in the research and production of what is a world-class, cutting-edge body of work that not only advances our understanding of our marine structure but will be vital in terms of informing development and management of our marine resource.
I am delighted to see the Real Map of Ireland included in the atlas for primary schools. When I was going to school, the sea around the map of Ireland was characterised by a blandly amorphous shade of light blue around the coast. We were introduced only to the names of the seas and oceans whereas now there is the chance to explore a vast, exciting and inspirational canvas covering 220 million acres – ten times our landmass.
At a rather miserable time in Ireland’s economic history when cynicism and negativity are the order of the day, the seas lapping our shores as they have done for millennia remind us of the fact that we are merely temporary custodians of these resources and that if we act wisely we can harness their economic, commercial and environmental potential, putting them at the careful service of this generation and the generations to come. Here in the Institute there is a positive story of how that potential is now being managed to be both in harmony with nature and responsive to the demands of a modern economy. So your work expands to ensure dynamism at the heart of the traditional marine industries of fishing, aquaculture, seaweed, shipping and tourism and to put Ireland at the forefront of exciting new marine related industries such as renewable wave and tidal energy sources; biotech applications from marine organisms in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors; the convergent opportunities for marine technology and the ICT sector in marine environmental monitoring and the development of water management technologies that have large and growing global markets.
As the resources of the ocean become ever more implicated in the future development of high technologies sectors like energy, ICT, medical and pharma they will be a key part of Ireland’s future economic story. Our economic recovery will in part rest on this Institute’s capacity for ensuring that Ireland’s marine resources are translated into economically viable ideas which deliver jobs, efficiencies and solid prosperity for our people. You are key enablers in the delivery of the Government’s marine strategy
‘Sea Change’. Y ou are key strategists in optimising the funding available, in directing research, in encouraging innovation.
One of the most famous Irish books to emerge from a marine landscape is Muiris O Suilleabhain’s iconic work on life on the Blasket Islands, “Fiche Blian ag fas.” This Institute has had its own “Twenty years a-growing.” They have been very good years of adventure, exploration and potential revealed. They have set the scene for great years to come. As those who rowed from island to mainland would say as the winds freshened - “Ná ligimis ár maidí le sruth”, “let us not rest on our oars.” There is a vast amount of work to be done to comprehend how to make our seas and oceans work best for us and for those who will come after us. Y ou are the people who have made that work your personal vocation and you start your next two decades with a context that is very challenging. No-one knows the marine environment or its potential better than you. May your work continue to harness and harvest that potential, surprising and exciting us with the many ways in which our marine environment, for all its dangers, can make life better for all of us.
Thank you all so much agus go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.