REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE CHURCHTOWN COMMUNITY CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE CHURCHTOWN COMMUNITY CENTRE FRIDAY, 14 JULY 2000
Is breá liom bheith anseo i bhur measc ag an ócáid speisialta seo, agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chuireadh agus as fáilte fíorchaoin.
It is a great pleasure to join you here today for the official opening of the Churchtown Community Centre. I would like to thank Mr. Gerry Murphy for the kind invitation.
I understand that your parish priest, Fr. Twohig is a great scholar of Michael Collins, his times and legacy. In his biography of Collins, Tim Pat Coogan writes that when Collins started a new project ‘he started with the impossible and worked up’. I suspect that this philosophy is close to the heart of people like Gerry Murphy. They don’t look for tasks equal to their powers. Rather they look for powers equal to their tasks. Clearly, you have those powers with some to spare.
Your success tells its own powerful story - a story of a remarkable people who came together and formed the Churchtown Development Association and the Churchtown Village Renewal Trust, and together with Statutory and non Statutory Bodies you planned the renewal of your parish and surrounding areas. You made decisions for the benefit of your community. You have shown that it takes more than bricks and mortar to build a community. You need a spirit of belonging, a community spirit that unites what is otherwise a random collection of houses, a chance collection of people. Community spirit is built and sustained by people of big hearts, and wonderful imaginations, generous with their time, their skills, their enthusiasm, who share a dream of a better life for themselves and their families. They want to live in an environment where people care about each other, not a place of anonymous strangers. But they know community does not happen by accident. It has to be developed and sustained. Not everyone is good at doing the slog work it needs, but thank God there are such people and you have them in abundance here. I am sure this spirit of community has helped the families and neighbours to cope with the tragic loss of Niamh O Herlihy and her young sister Anita, and Carmel Conroy and her little daughter Emma in that terrible car accident. Such loss is heartbreaking and I know that our thoughts are with William and Delia Conroy, Liam and Marie O Herlihy and Emma’s father David. They will always hold a special place in the hearts and minds of this community. Caring communities share their good days and their bad. They allow people to believe they are not alone.
Today, we in Ireland are experiencing an era of prosperity and of opportunity, there is a palpable air of optimism and regeneration right across the country. Here in Churchtown as elsewhere in the country people struggle and juggle with today’s web of challenges and opportunities. Everyone wants their village of town to be vibrant and dynamic, offering economic stability to the next generation. But no one wants progress to destroy cherished character and values so a careful path has to be woven between creating and managing economic success while ensuring that the spirit and character of villages like Churchtown is cherished and conserved for future generations. It is a tribute to the people of Churchtown that you have met the challenges so well. It is absolutely astonishing what has taken place and continues to take place here in this most amazing community.
The history of Churchtown tells us of the burning of the village in 1822, the terrible human price paid during famine times leading to the movement of young people away from the land in search of a better life beyond our shores. But the place where we are born and grow up in exerts a powerful tug on the human psyche. The collective wisdom of past generations of the people is Churchtown has become part of the land itself. Many of those who stayed did so out of a desire to make their own area a better place to live, a place which would provide opportunities for themselves and their children.
Former generations bequeathed Churchtown its great legacy of wonderful stone buildings- the school building and the Market House are fine examples of your heritage. I congratulate you in particular for the way in which you have joined the old and new seamlessly together using the natural and traditional resources wisely and well while also maximising the potential of the Internet. Today, Churchtown is an exemplary model for the development of a sustainable community, you are giving both ideas and confidence to other communities throughout Ireland and Europe.
One of our National newspapers described Churchtown as ‘a scenic village off the beaten track’. What an understatement! The people of Churchtown have demonstrated their commitment to the renaissance of this village and to the creation of a model for Europe in village renewal. The centre which I am officially opening today will provide a forum where issues of interest to the entire community will be addressed and where the people of Churchtown, young and old can play their part in maintaining its profound love of both people and place.
I would like to thank all of you for your wonderful welcome today, I have enjoyed my visit to this beautiful village and it gives me great pleasure to declare the Community Centre officially open.