REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF “CRUMLIN WRITES”, NIGHT, CRUMLIN COLLEGE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF “CRUMLIN WRITES”, NIGHT, CRUMLIN COLLEGE OF FURTHER EDUCATION, CRUMLIN ROAD
Dia dhíbh go léir. Is mór an pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh tráthnóna.
It’s good to be here with you all this evening – my thanks to Liam Arundel, Chief Executive Officer of the City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee, and Philip Galvin, Principal of this college for inviting me.
One of my proudest roles as President is to be patron of the National Adult Literacy Agency. Through it I have met some of the most outstanding, courageous and interesting men and women in Ireland and they have taught me what a lonely place life can be for those who experience literacy problems - what a waste of their undiscovered talents to them and to their families, their communities and our country.
Today, we experience the wonderful work undertaken through the VEC’s throughout the country to help people improve their literacy skills. Their investment in the individual is a huge investment in our society, building up talent, skills, confidence and potential. We have much to be grateful to you for.
Some of us have met before for I remember that this centre’s men’s personal development group visited the Áras last year. Visitors to Áras, or people I meet around the country, often ask me who is the most impressive person I have ever met. They expect to hear a household name from among the many famous people and international leaders I have been lucky to meet but the truth is that the people I cannot forget, the people who inspired me are the mother of five and the father of three who both faced up to their literacy problems and in so doing utterly transformed their lives, you could say met their true selves for the first time through education.
I think of the terrible sense of loss that mother felt when she could not read a bedtime story to her children, when she brought home ‘yellowpack’ dog food instead of beans, when her adult son living far from home thought she had forgotten him because she never wrote to him. I think of the father who was terrified his work colleagues would figure out he couldn’t read the paper, how he isolated himself when they were reading the sport pages of the papers, how he longed to be part of that chatty literate circle. Today, the mother is a university graduate and the father is the author of a poem so profound I have never been able to forget it - a poem about the joy of writing his wife and children’s names for the first time on a blank sheet of paper.
Many of you in this room will understand what living with that secret must have felt like. You know how small, how left out, how lacking in self-confidence you feel. But you have also felt the liberation that learning brings once you have made the courageous leap back to the world of education. Only you know the effort it took to make that move and then to stick with it. Old memories of school may have been dreadful, fear of failure may have almost overwhelmed you but you took the chance anyway and in making yourselves vulnerable you found the road to your own strength, your own talent and giftedness, to the extraordinary heroic you, that was almost lost to us.
Tonight we celebrate your achievement, your recollections and thoughts and poetry expressed in ‘Crumlin Writes’. My thanks to Frances Ward, the Adult Literacy Organiser, for sending me the publication which has such a great store of articles, recollections, poems and stories - each utterly unique and each helping all of us to understand the human condition much better. I hope that the joy of seeing your work published and read and respected will make you hungry for more and curious to find out what untapped potential lies inside yourself. There was a time when no one got a second chance. Not any more. Lifelong learning, adult education is now sitting on our doorsteps – like a golden opportunity.
The VEC has done a splendid job in delivering the opportunity for adult education literacy classes and the students have taken that opportunity and put it to very good use. An army of wonderful volunteers lives out the philosophy of improving self-esteem, building confidence, encouraging learning in a relaxed, friendly and supportive atmosphere.
This evening I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the tutors, volunteers, whose generosity is the very lifeblood of our highly successful adult literacy services throughout Ireland. You do it without thought of praise or thanks but richly deserving both. You do it for the reward that comes from seeing another human being achieve their truest and best potential.
Congratulations to everyone associated with the success story we celebrate tonight – or should I say double success story, because not only do we celebrate the publication of the ‘Crumlin Writes’ booklet but also its companion ‘Cherry Orchard and Ballyfermot Tales’.
To the most important people here this evening, the participants whose articles are showcased in the booklets, I say, we all say, comhghairdeachas libh go léir – congratulations to each and everyone of you. Perhaps we may even have the next Deirdre Purcell, Patricia Scanlan or Roddy Doyle in the group. But what we certainly have are very articulate and forceful ambassadors for Adult Literacy classes, people whose stories will, I hope, inspire others who are suffering in silence to seek help and know a day of pride such as the one you are enjoying today.
Go maire sibh. Go raibh maith agaibh.