REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE UNVEILING OF A PLAQUE COMMEMORATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF IRISH
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE AT THE UNVEILING OF A PLAQUE COMMEMORATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF IRISH IMMIGRANTS TO NZ
Your Worship the Mayor of Wellington
Jim Bowler, President of Wellington Irish Society
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am delighted to be here to unveil this plaque, the erection of which was generously sponsored by the Committee of the Wellington Irish Society, whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier this morning.
We are extremely proud of the contribution which men and women of Irish birth and of Irish descent - the global Irish family - have made to New Zealand.
Many of New Zealand’s best-known names, throughout the ages, are of Irish descent, such as the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, whose maternal grandfather emigrated from Co. Armagh in 1910; Dave Gallagher, the captain of the first All Blacks team, who was born in Ramelton, Co. Donegal, where another plaque stands today to his memory; and Kate Sheppard, the leader of the New Zealand Suffragette movement, who spent her early childhood years in Dublin.
Many more ordinary Irish men and women put down roots too, worked hard, raised good families and made their own personal, private, but nonetheless significant contribution to building a great New Zealand. It is important that they too be remembered, and today we honour their memory, as much as that of their more celebrated compatriots.
Similarly, we remember that both of Ireland’s main traditions - the orange and the green - are represented in the history of New Zealand and it was here away from the vanities of history at home that they learnt to befriend and love one another, to be reconciled.
Lying behind almost all of their stories is a tale of emigration and separation; of families torn asunder, at opposite ends of the world. Only recently have we reversed the centuries-old scourge of emigration that robbed us for a century and a half - right up to the 1980s - of so many of our young people. It drained us of energy and hope. Today one of the happiest achievements of modern Ireland is that we are no longer a country of emigration, but a destination for immigrants
who come because we now have employment and opportunity, those simple but vital things that once brought so many of our people here.
Today, as we welcome our new arrivals, we will never forget the generosity shown by New Zealanders to our own emigrants, and their contribution to Ireland’s development made from beyond our shores.
These unpaid ambassadors, heralds of our country’s new dawn, brought honour to themselves and recognition to the country of their birth. We owe them a huge debt. Their success abroad gave us faith in ourselves at a time when it was a struggle to find such faith. Their hard earned money helped families at home to survive tough times and to educate a new generation who eventually turned the tide. Ireland’s contemporary good news story has many authors and it is those who came to New Zealand that we acknowledge today with pride. Their courage, their resilience, their values and their contribution are imprinted on the landscape of both Ireland and New Zealand and now acknowledged in this plaque which I have the honour to unveil.