REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF HEART HOUSE, 54/55 ECCLES STREET, DUBLIN 1
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF HEART HOUSE, 54/55 ECCLES STREET, DUBLIN 1 TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY, 2004
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá áthas orm bheith i bhur measc inniu ar an ócáid speisialta, ócáid stairiúil, seo.
It is a particular joy to join you for the official opening of Heart House. My thanks to Declan McCourt, Chairman of the Mater Foundation for inviting me to this day of celebration. So many people have worked with a heart and a half to create this place. It is a showcase of the goodness of the Foundations volunteers, the generosity of the public and the huge respect the Irish people have for the Mater Hospital which has served them here for almost a century and a half. Eccles Street is full of history from its associations with Isaac Butt and James Joyce’s Ulysses to the venerable Catherine McAuley. Her generosity created the Mater hospital and inspired generation after generation to sustain it and to develop it. This new house is linked to that remarkable woman by that unbroken seam of charity.
We gather to open Heart House appropriately enough during “Nurses Week, when there is a particular focus on the huge debt of gratitude we owe to our world-class nursing staff. This house reminds us of how deeply indebted we are to all the Mater’s staff, a community of care of over 2000 people, an interlocking team whose central objective is first-class patient care. Long after they have finished their shifts they are organising the Foundation fundraisers, selling the raffle tickets and Heart Badges, prising money out of friend and stranger by all the machiavellian means that fundraisers are renowned for – all done for the simple unselfish satisfaction of having a place like this to put at the service of others.
This audience knows only too well the grim statistics that make cardiovascular disease the biggest killer in Ireland. You are the people who keep telling us to stop smoking, take more exercise, eat less junk, reduce the stress, if we don’t want to join the thousands who will need cardiac care. Little by little that message is getting through and more people are taking seriously their daily responsibility for their own long-term health but there is a long road yet to travel before those statistics are reversed. This facility with its training and day care focus will help many heart patients live better lives, more fulfilled, more supported in the management and treatment of what are very debilitating illnesses. Its research and prevention facilities will help a lot more of us to stay clear of Heart House or the hospital in the long run.
These are exciting times for the hospital with huge changes as the redevelopment of the campus rolls out, old facilities disappear and new state of the art buildings take their place. The 21st century Mater will be the best Mater yet in terms of facilities and highly skilled staff but there is a Mater value system, an ethos and a spirit which no bricks or mortar can create. Human beings commit to it, live it and in living it, inspire others to commit to it. They show it in a million unsung ways, day in and day out, in care for the patient, in compassion for patient’s families, in respect for colleagues, in pursuit of better knowledge, in fundraising for better facilities. Often the good they do is quietly taken for granted in the helter-skelter of busy hospital life but today through Heart House we see the powerful, outward visible evidence of that Mater spirit.
Today above all is a day of heartfelt gratitude for this House, all it symbolises and all it represents. To the volunteers and staff of the Mater Foundation, a huge “well done” and congratulations to the Mater Hospital for making Heart House possible. My very best wishes to the nurses who are due to graduate on Friday. May their careers bring them the deep personal and professional fulfilment felt by so many staff in all disciplines and trades who have passed through the Mater since it was founded in 1861.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh anseo. Gura fada buan sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.