Remarks by President McAleese On accepting Distinguished Fellowship Award At AIT
Remarks by President McAleese On accepting Distinguished Fellowship Award At Athlone Institute of Technology Wednesday, 31 Jan
Is cúis rí-áthais dom bheith anseo libh i mBaile Átha Luain ar son an ocáid speisialta seo. Is mór liom an Comhaltachta Oirirce atá sibh i ndiaidh a bhronnadh orm.
Professor Ciarán Ó Catháin, thank you for those very kind words and my thanks also to the Governing Body of Athlone Institute of Technology. It is a considerable honour to be the first recipient of the Institute’s Distinguished Fellowship.
There was once another Ciarán who put the Irish midlands on the map academically – a millennium and a half ago when he chose the magnificent monastic site at Clonmacnoise. Today in this Institute, which has not yet reached its fortieth year, a formidable team led by another Ciarán has helped transform the intellectual and vocational landscape of this region, bringing opportunities for education and for life, which no other generation has known. A new centre of learning has grown and matured here, attracting students and scholars and adding huge social, economic and knowledge capital to the region. It is free of the wild marauders who once threatened Clonmacnoise but faced with the tough challenges and fierce ambitions of a confident and high-achieving Ireland on the brink, for the first time in its history, of realising its true potential.
The beautiful, stately, Shannon has coursed its way through Ireland’s many Athlones. It has been silent witness to our shambling poor, our forced emigrants, our conflicts, our colonised and emasculated generations. And now this transformed Ireland, this changing Athlone, the best-educated generation ever in Ireland, the most emancipated, the most egalitarian, the most likely to complete the firm and uncompromising ambition of our people, articulated in the proclamation set out in our constitution, to be a republic of true equals, a place where the children of the nation are cherished equally, a homeland where a true social order flourishes and the dignity of each human being is acknowledged and vindicated. No generation has come as close as we have. How did we do what King Canute could not do, how did we reverse all those tides of misery that once threatened to overwhelm us? The answer is deceptively simple. When education was the preserve of an elite, when only ten percent of our people were educated, we realised only ten percent of our potential. This Institute opened its doors at virtually the same time that free second-level education became available to all and all those new heads, described so memorably by Seamus Heaney as “intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars” (extract from “ From the Canton of Expectation”), altered the course of Ireland’s destiny through widening their own aspirations.
Just as Saint Ciarán’s education took him to Italy and to France, bringing Ireland to Europe and the rest of Europe to Ireland, so this Institute has had a strong international reach and focus. I became particularly aware of this in 2003 on a trade mission to China when I was accompanied by Professor Ó Catháin, Austin Hanley, Head of the School of Engineering and Mary Simpson, International Student Manager. During that visit I learned about the extent of academic cooperation between AIT and Chinese universities. The quadrangular relationship that exists between AIT, Southeast University, Nanjing, Ericsson, Shanghai and Ericsson, Athlone, for example, is an excellent model of the kind of partnership between nations and between colleges and industry that is essential to keep Ireland’s competitive advantage in the global marketplace and to keep our knowledge economy bang on top of the leading-edge technologies in live, industrial environments.
Now I hear you have recently signed your first agreement with a Middle Eastern institution and that must surely augur well for the continued enrichment of this international and multicultural campus where some 400 international students play a considerable role in creating a culturally diverse, intellectually vibrant community. The technologies learnt may change dramatically in the coming years but the friendships born here will last lifetimes, connecting Athlone to many parts of the world through its primary ambassadors, the graduates of AIT.
A few weeks ago seven PhD students graduated from AIT, four of them starting their third-level education through the flexible ladder access programme available here which gives crucial encouragement and support to so many mature and non-traditional students who might otherwise have found it difficult to participate as fully and successfully in education as they did here in Athlone. Every single one helped to achieve a higher education qualification is an investment, not alone in that individual, but in his or her family, community, county and country.
Close to my own heart is the big issue of access for students with disabilities where AIT is a leading light and a recipient last year of a major award, and your student outreach to organisations like the Samaritans, St Hilda’s Services, and Special Olympics Ireland shows a flourishing community spirit to be very proud of.
But then that is AIT’s core mission, this community and its future, and that future depends on jobs, on industry, on commerce, on growing entrepreneurs as well as attracting them and that is where the Midlands Innovation and Research Centre is making such a contribution to fostering an entrepreneurial climate, growing and embedding an entrepreneurial culture which will be the seedcorn of opportunity for future generations.
Somewhere I hope, not too far down the line, there is a generation coming which will have grown up in a peaceful and prosperous Ireland, whose citizens North and South work comfortably and well together, and whose people enjoy a rich cultural, social, political and intellectual life and the peace of mind that comes from living in a place where everyone counts and everyone has the chance to contribute.
The wonderful work you do in AIT is pushing us, taking us ever closer to that Ireland. Thank you for the passion you have for the journey and thank you for allowing this Distinguished Fellow on board. St Ciarán is once said to have been so cross with the then King Ailill that he silenced him for a week – possibly because he talked too much. So this seems an opportune time to stop while the other Ciarán is still smiling!
Mo bhuíochas libh uilig arís as ucht an onóir seo. Tá súil agam go n-éirí go geal libh i ngach ní atá romhaibh mar dhaoine agus mar hinstitiúid.