REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NEW GREENSHOOTS-NEWRY LTD. CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NEW GREENSHOOTS-NEWRY LTD. INCUBATION AND INNOVATION CENTRE
Tá mé iontach sásta bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
Thank you, everybody, for that warm welcome. I would like to thank Dr. Raymond Mullan, Chairman of the Board of Greenshoots‑Newry Ltd. and the other board members for inviting me to open the Incubation and Innovation Centre today. If ever a venture was well-timed and well-conceived then this has to be it – opened on the very day of the return of devolved government, this centre has a specific focus on harvesting the new business potential offered by the promised era of peace and partnership. In other words your focus is on adding the word prosperity.
Business and enterprise are key to Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. Once this jurisdiction was in the very forefront of the first industrial revolution, with a culture of entrepreneurialism and business innovation the envy of many. Now with the draining and wasteful years of conflict behind it you are putting in place the facilities both physical and intellectual which will connect Northern Ireland to the global knowledge economy through the nurturing of a new generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.
It is very encouraging that the Incubation and Innovation Centre is itself an innovation – the very first of its kind in the Further Education Sector in Northern Ireland and the product of a formidable partnership between the Newry Institute and the University of Ulster. For local entrepreneurs it would be hard to overestimate the positive impact generated by access to these two crucial resources and this wonderful modern, purpose built facility. It will be both a launch pad to individual businesses and a leaven within the community, consolidating the fresh new can-do culture, which has characterised this unique border region in recent years.
I remember the days when prosperity was a see saw with Newry up one day and down the next, Dundalk up one day and down the next. There was little stability and a lot of disappointment. Today, though, all that has changed and no place better underlines the advantages of joining up cross-border thinking and strategic development of an island wide economic perspective.
Newry is, of course home to InterTradeIreland, the all-island trade and business development body established under the Good Friday Agreement to help support businesses to take advantage of these very opportunities, which peace and partnership alone can deliver. It is good to see InterTradeIreland represented on the Centre’s Advisory Committee – offering another powerful conduit and resource in the pursuit of effective and profitable collaboration.
We know that profit and economic success are relatively easily measured but in helping to seedbed a culture of active good neighbourliness and mutual endeavour this Centre is also helping to secure the peace and bring the so-called peace dividend close to home. The benefits are many layered and it is not hard to see how you were able to attract the necessary financial support from the International Fund for Ireland, the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation, and Invest Northern Ireland.
Last Friday my last event in New York was at the famous Mount Sinai Hospital where Invest Northern Ireland and Enterprise Ireland jointly hosted a conference and Award ceremony for a relatively new organisation called BioLink. It is a voluntary network of lifescience professionals working across the United States and the island of Ireland and its specific function is to pool knowledge, experience and insight in order to generate more investment in the industries, educational establishments and professions associated with the lifesciences in both Ireland, North and South and the United States. Already in a short period of time the network has almost a thousand members and has generated millions of dollars worth of new business. There was a restless energy in that room last Friday, the kind of energy that is anxious to get on with making a good idea work. It is in this room too and the omens that accompany this launch could not be better.
The Republic’s National Development Plan, 2007‑2013, recognises that strengthened cross-border infrastructure will enhance the potential for major economic and social gains for the whole of the island and so is giving priority to the new Dundalk‑Newry high quality dual carriageway. It could be a metaphor for what lies ahead. Instead of the old obstacle course a new carriageway. It’s a time for new things, new ideas, new success stories.
This new Incubation and Innovation Centre is Newry City’s newest sign and symbol of a confident successful future. I am privileged to officially open it on this auspicious day and to wish all those who use it, run it and support it many days like this when you take righteous pride in achievement and set your faces to tomorrow with conviction.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh. Go n-éirí go geal libh. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.