REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF PACE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF PRISONERS AID THROUGH COMMUNITY EFFOR
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Thank you very much for your warm welcome to All Hallows and this celebration to mark the 40th anniversary of PACE [Prisoners Aid through Community Effort]. My particular thanks to Lisa Cuthbert for her kind invitation, which did not take much thinking about on my part for I have admired the work of PACE for a long time and got to know its founder Martin Tansey very well during my years teaching Criminology and Penology in Trinity College.
Martin was then one of very few people working in the field of Criminal Justice who was willing to talk openly to law students, to give them insight into his work with the Probation Service and to encourage cross-disciplinary engagement and public debate on the prisoner in the community. He was passionate about what could be done and what should be done and back in 1969 when he started PACE there were few who had his commitment. For most people the welfare of prisoners was not high on their agenda.
Yet he made a start, setting up an organisation to care for one of the most overlooked and indeed deliberately overlooked groups in society-released prisoners. If he was to wait for a right time there would be no celebration today. But because of that good start we gather40 years on to give thanks for this organisation’s achievements and to encourage it to keep on going.
Well over a century ago, the great French writer Victor Hugo said “He who opens a school door closes a prison” and in effect that is the principle Martin Tansey, then a Probation Officer in Mountjoy Prison, put into practice in founding PACE. What Martin realised was that society in general and former prisoners in particular would benefit enormously if a little thought and effort were put into providing support to people immediately after they have served their sentences and were released back into the community as free people. Martin knew from bitter experience that there was a huge vulnerability which, if not addressed, could see offenders pushed to the margins at best and sliding back into crime and prison at worst. But he also saw a huge opportunity to create support structures which would fill that vulnerability gap, help the released prisoner to build a decent life and to become a problem-solver rather than an ongoing problem. He focussed on the simple but big things in life - accommodation, a roof over our heads, a job, a skill that brings income and self-esteem, the confidence that comes from education and simply being literate and families - ensuring they built up the coping skills they needed for the journey ahead.
Martin Tansey was determined to break the vicious circles of recidivism and exclusion. He had a strong faith in humanity. He believed in the power of ex-prisoners to change patterns of behaviour that got them into trouble and to make a real effort to live lives that would build up our civic society rather than adding to its miseries. He believed in the power of the community, in each one of us, to become helpers in the process of supporting ex-prisoners in their attempts to make better choices and better lives for themselves and their families. Seamus Heaney in “Ten Glosses” asks “Who is my neighbour?” and then replies with the answer from the old Penny Catechism
“My neighbour is all of mankind”.
That interconnectedness which is at the heart of a caring society combines a genuine sense of community with a pragmatic and realistic understanding that those who are weak weaken us all and vice versa. We have a vested interest in helping those who want to make themselves stronger citizens. PACE was set up on the simple premise that everyone who came to them would be a volunteer, someone who had already made that crucial decision in their own minds to start off on a fresh new road. Martin Tansey argued that, this being so, society had a responsibility to meet them half-way and this has been the philosophy of PACE to this day and why it has drawn into its orbit such powerful partners as the Probation Service, FÁS, as well as the education-providers and the City Council.
The people who with the help of PACE undertook personal journeys of recovery were surely tested time and time again but they held on and in doing so earned pride in themselves and the respect of society. They carved out new lives. They deserve recognition in this celebration for, without those volunteers, without people making a real effort to change their lives, PACE would have closed its doors long ago. Instead PACE, with the support of the Probation Service and its other partners, has delivered the gift of a second chance to countless people over the last 40 years through the practical support it offers to those leaving prison by way of training, education, accommodation and development programmes.
The possibility of the second chance is fundamental in life. Each day, for as long as there is breath in our bodies, there is the opportunity to do things differently, to do them better, to be people who build up a good and healthy world and to leave behind all those things which reduced us humanly as individuals and reduced the good in the world. My distinguished predecessor, Éamon De Valera, was once the last prisoner in Kilmainham Gaol. He could tell us a thing or two about second chances and how to use them well.
For four decades PACE has faithfully discharged this special vocation in a climate still not comfortable with ex-prisoner issues and now in a very difficult economic climate which will certainly impact in special ways on PACE service users. Just as there was no best time to found PACE so the present moment is still the best time to keep on doing this important work. My pleasant task today is simply to pay tribute to all involved in PACE these forty years, to express my sincere thanks on behalf of the people of Ireland and to encourage you to keep faith with your founder’s vision as you head into the next decade. Congratulations to your chairperson, Mary Ellen McCann, for her contribution and that of everyone involved in PACE and with PACE as partner agencies down through the years. Continued success. And enjoy this hard-earned day of celebration.
Is iontach an obair ata ar siúl agaibh agus go raibh maith agaibh go léir.