Remarks by President McAleese to the Tipperary Rural Travellers Project Anti Racism Conference
Remarks by President McAleese to the Tipperary Rural Travellers Project Anti Racism Conference Thursday, 24th February 2000
Cuireann sé athas ar mo chroí bheith anseo libh inniú agus tá mé thar a bheith buíoch daoibh as a chuireadh a thug sibh dom. Go raibh maith agaibh go leir as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur romham.
It is a great pleasure to be here with you today to close this Conference on Anti Racism. I want to thank Margaret Griffin and all of you for your warm welcome. A special thanks to Philomena Costigan for inviting me. As I saw from the exhibits on my way in, this conference is only one of a range of programmes and initiatives implemented by the Tipperary Rural Travellers Project, but it is a very important one.
Here in Ireland in the 21st Century, we must recognise that it is only in confronting our failings and weaknesses as you have been doing here today, in teasing out the issues, in making concrete decisions about the practical and attitudinal changes that must be made, that we can hope to grow and develop into the confident, diverse, inclusive, society that all our citizens deserve.
There is no doubt that Ireland is going through a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic progress. We can be justifiably proud of this. But we still have a distance to travel. Indeed recent reports on Irish poverty levels in comparison with other countries, is a salutary reminder that much work remains to be done. In some ways the gap between rich and poor, between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, seems to be increasing – as those who are doing well seem to accelerate further ahead and those whose boats are beached remain static, bogged down in unemployment, poverty, discrimination, disadvantage and exclusion, made all the harder to bear by the growing self-confidence and success all around them.
We are entitled to take heart from the huge improvements and benefits our recent economic success has brought and hopefully will continue to bring, as more and more people find work and, through it, a stake in society. But our success as a nation cannot be measured merely in terms of economic prosperity. It also depends on how fairly and equally those opportunities are shared among our people - on their access to education, employment, decent housing and healthcare, on the quality of life they have. Indeed, an elementary measure is the very length of life – highlighted by the shocking statistic that life expectancy for travellers is 10 to 12 years below the national average.
We are not yet at that point where every individual counts, and is made to feel that he or she counts, as a valuable member of our community. We know that many lives are lived in the frustration of underachievement, of problems with literacy, of poor skills and we also know that each life which does not realise its potential is a huge loss to the individual and to his or her family and community. It is also a huge loss to us as a people, a talent squandered. To realise our full potential as a society we need to release all that talent, give it all the best possible chance, for the more people who are on the margins the weaker is the centre. We are fortunate to be living through times when there is real hope, real opportunity for the creation of a society in the 21st century that is all centre and no margins. But those opportunities depend on a public which has bought into the full consequences and implications of social inclusion. The basic building block of social inclusion is respect for every human being, not just those we like, not just those who share our views and identity, but for everyone who shares this island with us.
Irish people know what it is like to be excluded. In how many countries of the globe did our ancestors arrive, beaten by disease and oppression, by starvation and neglect, hoping for a place to make a fresh start, only to find the signs saying “No Irish need apply”. Few peoples understand the hurt, the injustice, the intrinsic evil of such stereotyping as we do and yet we also know that we are not immune from such attitudes ourselves.
So it is timely that we talk about these things openly, that we insist on outing and dealing with them and that, through confronting them as you are doing here at this conference, we can help our society to deal maturely, confidently and wisely with its dark side - its place where people feel vulnerable because being different has made them objects of contempt or hatred.
Just as in the peace process in the North the chance for real progress only developed when all sides began to truly listen to each others perspective, so too we can only tackle fear and prejudice by greater dialogue and patient, respectful engagement with each other. That’s why opportunities for debate such as this are so important. They provide a mechanism for us to listen to each other’s story, fears, feelings and needs as they actually are – not as we imagine or presume them to be. They provide scope for the recognition of common ground, of room for manoeuvre and change by all sides, for the emergence of new ideas for moving forward together.
I’m not saying that this is easy. If it were easy we wouldn’t be here. We have witnessed in Northern Ireland how difficult it is to break down the barriers built through the years of accumulated hurts, bitterness and violence, each side believing itself to be the sole victim, the sole martyr, the only one who was misunderstood, each side insisting the other change first, both sides paralysed by the vanity of their own certainties. We have counted the cost of each small step, known the frustration of going sideways and backwards at times but we have also seen how tenacity and determination allowed us to inch our way forward, little by little, until one day we realised we had all changed and there was no square one to go back to. These past few weeks have given us a glimpse of the possibilities of this great adventure and of course the fragility of it too. That is when you need champions, people who just do not give up because they have seen the future and it is worth the bumpy journey.
The same is true for the Traveller community and our society as a whole. We all have a responsibility, traveller and settled alike, to break down the barriers of misunderstanding and intolerance. We must be willing to acknowledge that there are faults and failings on our own side, as well as the other, but also recognise the many strengths on which to build our future. Because we all have a stake in building a future which respects and celebrates diversity – a generous, sharing Ireland that encompasses many traditions and cultures and creates space for all its people.
Let this new century be the time when the tired culture of bigotry and division gives way to a new adventure in consensus – to a time when the rigid orthodoxies which prevented a fulsome celebration of all the genius and talent this island produced, will give way to a generous embrace. Do we dare to imagine a culture of kindness and affirmation, beyond cold cynicism. Do we dare to sign up to making it happen rather than waiting for someone else to do it?
Those who organised this conference did indeed dare and before closing, I would like to pay tribute to them all. I don’t want to single out any one individual, but we are lucky to have such energised, passionate, positive ‘doers’ in Ireland today; they are not content to sit around and bemoan the problems, these are the people to get things done who know there has to be change and who make a start. Tús maith is leath na hoibre.
Go gcuití Dia bhur saothar daoibh. Go raibh maith agaibh go leir.