REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE 47TH YOUNG SCIENTIST & TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE 47TH YOUNG SCIENTIST & TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION WEDNESDAY, 12TH JANUARY 2011
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Is mór an onóir agus pléisúir dom bheith anseo inniu.
Happy New Year! The atmosphere is electrifying here at the 2011 BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition. I wish the whole country could be here to experience the enthusiasm and ingenuity of Ireland’s brightest and most inventive young minds. I am very grateful to Graham Sutherland for inviting me back again and I congratulate Graham and his team for making this such a brilliant landmark event. This is the Exhibition’s 47th year so there are a lot of former young scientists who are now not quite so young but who have gone on to great national and international careers, blazing many a proud trail for lreland.
William Ward said that ‘curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.’ It is a restless curiosity that takes problems apart and wrestles with them until it finds solutions. Our world has lots of problems that need dedicated, curious people to find good, workable solutions. Our young scientists and technologists are developing that curiosity in themselves, challenging themselves to understand complex things, stretching themselves intellectually and physically so that they push beyond the boundary of what is known and reveal things we need to know so that we can make progress, develop and improve. Without that inquistiveness, without that pursuit of solutions to humankind’s problems we would never have known the joy that comes from innovation and original thinking. There would be no cars or buses to bring us to the RDS, no electric light to show us the genius of our young people, no heating system to keep us warm, no interactive white boards, no computers, no medicine to treat our illnesses - just a flat, energyless world of unsolved mysteries.
There is nothing flat about the RDS today - it is a national grid of intellectual energy. It holds vaults of proof of the determination, organisation and capacity for sheer hard slog of our school students. We don’t have oil wells or gold mines in Ireland but we have amazing young brain-power and if you want to see it at work then this is the place to be. To be accepted for exhibition here in the RDS, whether as individuals or part of a team, you have to be prepared to work well outside of your comfort zone, to volunteer to push yourself when you do not have to. You are so entitled to be proud that you got to the RDS and to share that pride with the teachers whose commitment helped you get here. I am delighted that their work is being recognised through the Educator of Excellence Awards for it is they who encourage and nurture the curious minds of each generation of students, it is they who help generate the belief our young people have in themselves as credible, successful scientists and technologists.
Your parents also share your pride and I thank them for the many ways in which they also have helped and supported you to get to this Exhibition. In this room are the young men and women who will in a short enough time become the leaders, innovators, problem-solvers and entrepreneurs of 21st century Ireland. They make all of us proud and hopeful.
Congratulations to all of you. Enjoy each other’s company and enjoy the 2011 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition which is now officially open.
Gurb fada buan sibh ‘s go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.