REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE MS INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE MS INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION, O’REILLY HALL, UCD, SATURDAY, 4TH SEPT
Tá lúcháir orm bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ócáid seo agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chuireadh.
Good morning everybody. To those of you who are visiting Ireland from abroad, I welcome you here with our traditional Irish - céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes. I am very grateful to Sharyn Long for her kind invitation to open this important International Convention hosted by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland.
It is particularly heartening to see that this convention is not just a meeting of like minds but is a gathering of very many different experiences and perspectives, each of which has its own ray of light to shine on Multiple Sclerosis, each of which will illuminate that perplexing disease and broaden our shared understanding of it. Everyone here whether an MS sufferer, a health professional, an interested member of the public, or a friend or relative of a sufferer, carries to this Convention his or her unique piece of the jigsaw puzzle we have to put together if MS is to be understood and dealt with as effectively as possible. The convention’s theme ‘MS Uncovered’ is an open invitation to everyone here to share their insights as openly and confidently as possible so that this vital opportunity for disclosure and debate will squeeze every drop of information, distilled wisdom, research, hunch and experience, putting them at the service of those who need to know.
As we come together here, we do so in the knowledge that what happens here is part of a world wide effort for thousands of researchers all over the world are meticulously putting the pieces of that complicated MS puzzle together.
A diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis fills hearts with dread, as much in Ireland as anywhere for it is the most common disabling neurological illness in young adults here. Each sufferer is faced with dealing with an unpredictable predator, coping with its skewed trajectory and its devastating impact on life. Those of us who have witnessed friends or family strive to cope with its vagaries know just how important it is that the search for cause, treatment and cure continues relentlessly. The fact that it strikes most often as people are in the prime of life adds to its pathos, its inherent cruelty. The body's betrayal seems to have its own resolve. As with so many illnesses, the accompanying emotions, helplessness, anger, frustration, sadness abound, the search for answers to limitless questions, why me? Why did it happen? What am I facing? How will I cope? And of course overarching all the feelings of powerlessness to effect control over what is happening to us. Kafka put it well when complaining in a letter about his illness, TB, to a friend "My head has made an appointment with my lungs behind my back."
Thankfully we have wonderfully skilled, talented medical professionals and carers to help answer these questions – to demystify, demythify, to bring help, hope and comfort. We are deeply grateful for their relentless struggle against this difficult disease and are confident that great progress is being made all the time. There have been tremendous new developments in research into the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis, new techniques of diagnosis and treatment. When we consider what has been achieved in our lifetimes through medical science across so many once intractable illnesses we know that this disease too will indeed be uncovered and we wish well to those whose vocation it is to end that mystery.
I applaud those who accompany the sufferer on this difficult life journey, the families, the carers and the community that is the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Your web of care helps the sufferer to cope and to live life as easily and as normally as possible. The Society is their rock, guide, comfort and help. It is their voice in the fight for resources, their champion in the promotion of research, their light through the shadows that this disease casts. It is also an important partner with the statutory sector and health professionals for the more fluent that partnership the more efficient and effective the treatment, resources and facilities for sufferers. Advances, from cutting edge medical science to such developments as the National Physical and Sensory Disability Database which is under construction here, bode well for the future. Such developments could not happen without the cooperation of those who suffer from MS. With extraordinary generosity and forbearance they offer their lives, their experience and their suffering as the founding resource on which solutions can be tested and tried. The paving stones out of which you are creating the roadway to a better future are crafted out of their lived lives their struggles, triumphs and defeats. We are grateful to them for being here and for all they do to unmask this disease and end its vicious hold.
I wish you a successful conference that will contribute to improving the well-being of so many people. I hope that your presence at this conference will result in a reenergizing and deepening of your perseverance, that it will give you even greater resilience and fortitude in facing the challenges ahead and a faith in your ability to confront them in partnership with all those who share these days and this issue with you. Somewhere in all the discussions and meetings may you find time to develop the friendships and memories which make your lives worthwhile and happy. May you leave Dublin refreshed, and renewed in your vocation to this immensely valuable work and may MS be laid much barer here in Dublin than ever before so that well-founded hope is this conventions’s legacy to the future. That would surely vindicate the immense effort that has gone into preparing for this event and on your behalf I congratulate all those whose efforts made it happen and who even now are sustaining it. Well done to each of them and thank you for the additional honour I am soon to have of presenting annual awards to four very deserving, hard-working recipients, each of whose commitment exemplifies the spirit of determination which will please God soon, help crack the code of MS and uncover the best answers to its treatment and cure, to our final liberation from its power.
Mo bhuíochas libh arís. Guím gach rath agus séan ar bhur gcuid oibre san am atá le teacht. Go maire sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.