Remarks by President McAleese at Your Country, Your Call Dinner Announcement of Competition Winners
Remarks by President McAleese at Your Country, Your Call Dinner Announcement of Competition Winners AVIVA Stadium
Many thanks to Dr. Laurence Crowley for that kind introduction, to David Byrne, to each one of you for your attendance. I am particularly delighted to see the support of Government for Your Country Your Call underlined by the attendance of Ministers Hanafin and Ryan and, indeed, I also welcome the presence of opposition leader, Enda Kenny this evening.
From the drawing board stage onwards, this competition has been driven by volunteers who love Ireland, believe in Ireland and want the best for our future. It drew together a formidable team of busy, talented people and organisations and businesses all of whom gave their services free and many of whom contributed to the generous prize winners’ fund.
When the competition was launched in the beautiful Millennium Wing of the National Gallery last February the prevailing mood among our people was one of pessimism and disappointment. Seven months later we still have a mountain to climb but the economy has returned to growth, exports are increasing, foreign direct investors in high tech industries express their confidence in us by extensive investment, way in excess of many of our counterparts, and our people faced with unemployment or underemployment are flooding into colleges and training courses to prepare themselves better for the upturn when it comes. Those people are showing that while misery may love company there are more effective ways to restore hope. Your Country Your Call is about actively infusing hope by challenging people at home and abroad to use their creativity and imagination to construct projects capable of providing opportunity and prosperity for Ireland.
9,000 individuals and groups responded to that challenge. A formidable team of judges worked long and hard to reduce that amazing number to twenty semi-finalists. From tonight’s five finalists, two winning proposals will be announced in a very appropriate place - here in this fantastic new stadium of winners - the AVIVA Stadium which is itself an elegant and eloquent statement of faith in Ireland’s future.
To the unique, dynamic, unselfish and humble partnership which constructed and drove Your Country Your Call I say a massive thank you. You crossed the private, public and community sectors forming a contemporary meitheal of huge proportions. You took pride in this project and in what you could individually and collectively bring to it and I hope that as it enters this exciting phase you feel a deep sense of personal fulfilment.
To all those shortlisted I offer my congratulations and good wishes for you have been through a process of rigorous scrutiny which should reassure you about the value of pursuing your ideas further. There will of course be only two winners and for them in many ways, while tonight will be momentous, it is, of course, only the start of the journey. After this ceremony, their ideas will move into implementation phase where there will once again be that generous spirit of partnership that has characterised this competition to date as the relevant stakeholders in the public and private sectors work together and with the winners, where appropriate, to maximise the jobs and the potential of the two winning proposals.
This is a defining period in our history and Ireland faces real challenges. Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success is showing up. And at this defining moment of our history we need people to show up and then find that last twenty percent that is idealism, altruism, imagination and determination. That is what drives us to excel, for ourselves and for our community. The people drawn to support Your Country Your Call are all people who turned up and who stepped up to the plate of personal responsibility for our shared future and said – Is liomsa e. Ar Aghaidh libh. Ar Aghaidh linn.