REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF ST DOMINIC’S COMMUNITY RESPONSE PROJECT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF ST DOMINIC’S COMMUNITY RESPONSE PROJECT MULTI PURPOSE CENTRE TALLAGHT
Is cúis mhór áthais dom bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ócáid speisialta seo. Tá mé buíoch díbh as an chuireadh agus as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
It is a great pleasure to join you to celebrate the opening of this wonderful new Centre. Many people have worked incredibly hard to prepare for today, to make sure that it is a memorable day for everyone. I feel very privileged, to share this special day with you.
St Dominic’s Community Response Project was as its name says a community response to an alarming community problem the terrifying increase in the number of young people whose lives are thrown away because of drug addiction. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Drugs destroy lives, destroy futures, destroy hope. No family is immune, no matter how well we think we’ve educated our children about the danger of drugs, none of us can ever be certain that our family will escape.
The damage caused by drug addiction isn’t limited to devastating the life of the addict alone. The claws of this ferocious enemy can get an awful grip on a family, a street, a community. It creates a climate of fear, mistrust and even helplessness. It has swallowed up countless lives already, consigns what could have been good lives to the misery of a half-life that is in reality no life at all. It is tragic that so much individual human and collective potential is so needlessly wasted, thrown away, tragic for the person, for the family and for all of us as a community who have been robbed of an achieving, fulfilled neighbour, or friend, or colleague or citizen. Instead we have had to live with the grim consequences, the deaths, the petty crime, the dangers to health, the innocent children whose little lives are blighted even before they are born. The poison can so easily continue to the next generation, in a seemingly endless cycle of misery and human destruction.
It is hard to break that cycle. The drug market is a tough place. It has no place for feelings just for profit. It makes a very slippery enemy and it would be easy to become disillusioned. Yet the greatest failure would be to give up, to fail to try to tackle and defeat this enemy. It is a tribute to everyone here today that you did not give into the forces of darkness and despair. Instead you turned your concern into action and so the Community Response Project was born.
Yours is an example of true community spirit. Instead of wringing your hands you rolled up your sleeves and decided the future was not going to be a repetition of the past - it was going to be different – you were - are, going to make it different.
This new centre is a tribute to the human capacity to keep on caring for each other no matter what, and caring in an effective, meaningful way. These facilities will help turn lives around. The support offered here will provide a recovering addict with a positive network of care and encouragement. From family support groups to counselling, a contact centre, an education and prevention programme and aftercare services, you are providing a genuinely comprehensive and holistic approach, to preventing and treating every aspect of the drugs problem.
It is a great credit to this community that in three short years you have managed to get this project from the drawing board to this fine building. You did it, hard though it was, because a future without it was even harder to contemplate. This place tells of your faith in the future, your pride in your place and your people and your resolute determination that drugs will not do this community out of a decent life.
You are fortunate here that you have great community builders, people prepared to go to the meetings, develop the plans, do the work week in and week out, year in and year out. They do it, not for thanks, or recognition but on a day like this they deserve both. If the work was not done, if we did not have this place to celebrate, the future would look a lot less attractive. Our thanks to them and to the Tallaght Local Drugs Task Force, the Eastern Health Board and the Young Peoples Facilities and Services Fund who provided much need financial assistance for the project.
The facilities in this new Centre can be accessed by all the various local groups in this neighbourhood. Joining in the activities in the Centre will help build the shared memories on which communities grow and thrive and I wish you joy of them.
It is my great pleasure to officially open the St Dominic’s Multipurpose Centre.