REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF A SEMINAR ON LINKS BETWEEN IRELAND & BULGARIA
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF A SEMINAR ON LINKS BETWEEN IRELAND & BULGARIA, ‘A NEW PARTNERSHIP’
Добър ден дами и господа, приятели!
Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen
I regard it as both a pleasure and a great personal honour to be here today in this magnificent hall in the year that Sofia University celebrates 120 years of intellectual endeavour and academic achievement. I know that, in the future as in the past, the University will remain at the forefront of Bulgaria’s progress and development and I wish you every success in the coming years.
I want to talk today about Ireland and Bulgaria, two small countries that lie far apart, separated by the width of a continent and that historically have had little contact. Their parallel stories, however, have common elements that are striking. Ancient and complex civilizations transformed and energised by the advent of Christianity and of literacy; the foundation of great monasteries that became renowned centres of learning and art; invasion, conquest and long centuries of foreign rule and religious and cultural suppression. In the 19th century, we see the awakening of a national consciousness, a cultural and a literary revival, and a struggle for political independence.
Our historical experience does, I think, create a certain natural empathy between us. It can provoke that pleasant spark of recognition - that feeling, when we meet people for the first time, that we have known them all our lives. But a schematic historical comparison does not begin to tell the whole story. The differences are as revealing as the similarities, whether we compare the political, social or economic development of the two countries. For this reason, I am really delighted that Sofia University has decided to host today’s conference looking at Ireland and Bulgaria. I would like to congratulate and thank the Rector, Professor Ilchev, for his imaginative initiative. There are new areas of research to be undertaken and, by examining our similarities and our differences, I know that we will learn more about each other and more about ourselves. It is a step in that journey of exploration and discovery that we are undertaking as new partners and new friends in Europe.
Good examples of what I am talking about will be provided this morning by
Dr Emer Nolan of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Emer will look at religious identity and national literature in Ireland and touch upon some points of comparison with Bulgaria. I am sure that the comparisons and contrasts will be revealing for both the Irish and the Bulgarian members of the audience.
The head of the Russian and Slavonic Studies Department at Trinity College Dublin, Dr. John Murray, will explain why it is important to teach Bulgarian in Ireland. John studied in this university in the 1980s and so is long-standing friend of Bulgaria.
Trinity is also represented today by the Registrar, Juergen Barkhoff, who from the perspective of a German cultural historian will give his unique insight into Ireland and Bulgaria within a European context. I am particularly pleased that this morning a new cooperation agreement will be signed between Sofia University and Trinity College. I hope it starts a long and fruitful relationship, a relationship of ideas and ideals, rich in scholarship and learning.
For the past three years Michael Foley, who is the Head of Journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology, has helped to organize an annual seminar devoted to the memory of James David Bourchier. Today he will describe some of the great 19th century Irish journalists who worked abroad and explain the background that forged them.
Bourchier himself represents one of the few historical connections between Ireland and Bulgaria. It is a sad irony that in Ireland few have heard of him and, in Bulgaria, few know that he was Irish. Born in rural Ireland, in attending Portora Royal School and Trinity College he followed an educational path that has produced other great Irishmen, including Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.
In Bulgaria he was to become a hero for his loyalty to his adopted country and his love for the Bulgarian people. He was an outstanding journalist, not only because of his energy and obvious enthusiasm for his work but also because of his fearlessness and impartiality in defending truth and exposing injustice. This got him into trouble regularly and, in the course of a long career in the Balkans, he managed to offend at some point the governments of all the countries he covered, including, more than once, the Bulgarian authorities.
I admire the courage and stubbornness Bourchier consistently displayed. Today, journalists still play a key role in our societies, in exposing what is wrong and acting as a brake on the arbitrary exercise of power. They are, it could be argued, at least sometimes, the conscience of a democracy.
There was another Irish man, as heroic and extraordinary as Bourchier, who also followed the dictates of his conscience, Pierce O’Mahony. In 1903 he came to Bulgaria to help children orphaned in the Ilinden Uprising. The following year he opened St Patrick’s Orphanage here in Sofia. The boys took O’Mahony as their surname and even today the name survives, a beautiful legacy and a lasting tribute to the man’s work.
O’Mahony’s compassion is echoed today in the work of John O’Gorman, who for the past twenty years has been coming to Bulgaria to share his experience and help in the provision of care for people with disabilities and support for their families. Based on his experience in Ireland, he helped to establish the Bulgarian Association for People with Intellectual Disabilities and he has been active in helping to move children and adults out of institutions into the community. Later today, I look forward to visiting a centre for autism run by Sofia municipality which he participated in establishing. John does not draw attention to his work but over two decades he has been an important part of a team that has transformed the lives of hundreds of people. It may well be that, when the history of these times is written, John will be considered as much a friend of Bulgaria as Bourchier and O’Mahony.
This year we mark another point of connection between Ireland and Bulgaria. In May 1939, the Dublin Gate Theatre came to play at the National Theatre in Sofia. In his memoirs, the great actor and founder of the Gate, Mícheál MacLiammoir, describes with delight the facilities of the theatre, which far surpassed anything available at that time in Ireland. The shocking thing is that this tour marked the first and last time in the 20th century that an Irish theatre company would come to Bulgaria and it would be nearly seventy years before one played on the stage of the National Theatre again. The clouds of war gathered over Europe and when they parted, our continent was left fractured and, for nearly half a century, was to remain divided by hostility and mutual suspicion.
When we consider the many injustices of the 20th century, surely one of the most insidious was the breaking-off of communication and exchange between the peoples of Europe, the fear of contact, the closing of minds, all those wasted opportunities for friendship and good neighbourliness.
We should rejoice, therefore, at what has happened in our lifetime - the old barriers have fallen and strangers have become friends. A new model for our Europe has been created, not imposed by might or force of arms, but freely chosen, based not on ideology but securely founded on shared values and common standards.
The very fact that I am here today, the first Irish Head of State to visit Bulgaria, surely reflects the transformation that has taken place across Europe. We have embassies in Dublin and here in Sofia, something unimaginable twenty years ago. We see a growing economic engagement. We have seen a huge increase in the numbers of Irish visitors to Bulgaria and they soon learn of the warmth and hospitality of the Bulgarian people. It was the great Ivan Vazov who argued that Bulgarians did not need to go far to discover the world and its wonders as Bulgaria was itself a wonderful and undiscovered world. Irish people are now finding this out for themselves. Even the simple fact that there are now direct flights between Dublin and Sofia means that every week there are hundreds of people flying between our capitals, going on holiday, doing business, visiting friends and family. I hope I do not need to remind a Bulgarian audience, however academic, that there is also an important soccer match in Dublin in two days time and this will be another moment when strangers become friends.
Ireland and Bulgaria have a particularly rich heritage of music, dance and song; folk traditions that still flourish today. In recent years, too, we have seen regular exchanges of musicians and dancers. This contact is something new, something exciting and enriching. Later this morning, I will open an exhibition about the Aran Islands at the Ethnographic Museum, right in the heart of the city. These islands occupy a special place in the Irish mind as a guardian of the old traditions and as a reminder of a simpler way of life. The exhibition is the work of Bulgaria’s great photographer, Ivo Hadjimishev who, like travellers in the past, was captivated by the wild beauty of the islands and by the dignity and courtesy of their inhabitants. Ivo brings a new eye and a fresh perspective to the islands, a unique view of a Bulgarian artist, which, to paraphrase the words of William Butler Yeats, will express something that has never found expression until now.
We have also seen a rush of translations of Irish writing into Bulgarian: James Joyce and John Banville by Iglika Vassileva; Jennifer Johnston and Hugo Hamilton by Pravda Miteva; Yeats, Flann O’Brien, Joseph O’Connor, Colm Tóibín, the list goes on and on. Now, too, May 24th – the day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and Slavonic letters – has become part of the Dublin literary calendar.
The context of this transformation in our relations, and what has made much of it possible, is our joint membership of the European Union. From the Black Sea to the Atlantic, our continent has been reconnected. Today we work together with a common and single aim - to improve the lives of all our citizens and to ensure for them a Europe that is free, at peace, and ruled with justice and humanity.
We have benefited enormously in Ireland from our participation in the Union. It has transformed for the better whole areas of Irish life. This is not just an objective fact; it is one recognised by the Irish people. In successive Europe-wide opinion polls, they have shown themselves to be among the most enthusiastic supporters of the European project.
The Government is working hard to give voice to that enthusiasm in a changing Union. Last year, Irish voters decided not to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon. Research showed that many were motivated by genuinely held concerns which the Government has since sought to address and allay. As this work has progressed, our partners, including here in Bulgaria, have been very supportive. In December last year, EU leaders agreed a package of legal guarantees aimed at laying some of these concerns to rest. Once they are finalised, the Government hopes, later this year, to submit this new package to the Irish people.
In Ireland we took pride that under our Presidency of the Union in 2004, Bulgaria’s accession negotiations were completed. We recognised the difficult path of reform Bulgaria had taken and the efforts the country had made to meet the criteria for membership. We know that the process of reform continues and we wish Bulgaria success in meeting the challenges it faces. In Irish we say, “Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine”, we live in one another’s shelter. We are interdependent - what affects you, affects us, and your success is a success for us all. We cannot remain indifferent when the welfare and prosperity of our friends are at stake.
I am reminded this morning of the words of a poem by our Nobel Laureate
Seamus Heaney. The poem is a reflection on the fact that in Europe we are no longer strangers but members of the same family, and that our languages are not barriers between us but rich means of communication:
“So on a day when newcomers appear
Let it be a homecoming and let us speak
The unstrange word, as it behoves us here,
Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare.
Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
From middle sea to north sea, shining clear….”
I hope these lines will be an inspiration for your conference today. While some of you will meet for the first time today, I know you will feel at home with each other. Let your words and your ideas make new meanings flare, like beacons shining clear and signalling, peak to peak, from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
Желая ви успех!
Мерси за вниманието!
I wish you success. Thank you for your attention