REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER HOSTED BY THE PRESIDENT
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MCALEESE AT THE STATE DINNER HOSTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF FINLAND PRESIDENTIAL PALACE
Madam President, Mr Arajärvi, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Olen iloinen ollessani täällä Helsingissä tänäiltana
(I am happy to be here in Helsinki this evening.)
I am most grateful to you, Madam President, for inviting me to Finland, for the warm welcome which you have extended to me and for your kind words just now. You have made my husband Martin, myself, and every member of my delegation feel very much at home here and we are looking forward with great excitement to seeing Finland and to getting to know our Finnish friends during this visit.
It is a great pleasure and a particular honour for me to be the first President of Ireland to pay a State visit to Finland. We well remember the State visit to Ireland of former President Ahtisaari in 1996 and indeed he has had occasion to visit many times since then, as a trusted statesman who is assisting in the mechanics of peace-building in Northern Ireland.
This occasion offers a valuable and very welcome opportunity to build on the close ties and warm friendship which already exists between our two countries, and which we look forward to strengthening in the future.
Ireland and Finland lie at opposite ends of Europe but there have been many parallels in our historical experiences. Both our countries acquired their independence at about the same time. After independence, Finland was sorely tried by war, cold war and economic recession. It is a mark of your resilience and genius as a people, that you not only overcame those difficulties, but triumphed over them to emerge as a respected and confident member of the world community.
We in Ireland have also known more than our share of trauma and strife over the centuries, experiences that for so long held us back from reaching our full potential as a people. The years of conflict within Northern Ireland, in particular, taught us many painful lessons about the human cost to be paid when intolerance, hatred and violence are enabled to take root in a society. But the steady progress made in recent years towards achieving lasting peace and justice, are testament to the fact that no conflict is so intractable, no division so complete, that it cannot be bridged by men and women of courage, patience, forgiveness and foresight.
We in Ireland are fortunate that so many such men and women, at home and abroad, sustained the momentum for peace through many difficult times. We are particularly appreciative of the significant contribution to the achievement of peace made by Finnish statesmen. The patience and consummate diplomatic skills of your former Prime Minister, Harri Holkeri, contributed in no small part to the success of the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement. This crucial Finnish involvement with the Northern Ireland peace process continues with the participation of Brigadier Tauno Nieminen in the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and, as I have already mentioned, with the work of your predecessor, President Martti Ahtisaari, in inspecting paramilitary weapons dumps, a very important contribution to the stability of the Agreement and the seed-bedding of a culture of trust.
The efforts of these men have helped us shape a healthier and a happier future but they also reassured us that we live among a family of nations and peoples who, remarkably, do care about each other and who are willing to demonstrate that care in ways that demand sacrifice and commitment. I am glad to have this opportunity this evening to say a warm and heartfelt thank you to them, through you, Madam President, for their outstanding work.
These are days when we in Ireland are experiencing a level of prosperity and self-confidence that less than a generation ago would have been unimaginable. Like Finland, Ireland has now emerged from a relatively poor agricultural past and through considerable economic development, has evolved to a present which is characterised by innovation and high technology. Both our countries have faced difficult economic situations and succeeded in overcoming them and reaching enviable levels of growth, which enable us to face the world with confidence in the future. But the memory of more difficult times remains an important force in reminding us of how many members of our human family around the world remain trapped in poverty, violence and despair. It reminds us too, of our obligation to act with tolerance and generosity in helping to relieve that human misery and build a more humanly decent future for all.
For both our countries, that future will be built in a new, enlarged and vibrant European Union. Our shared membership of the EU has brought our two countries closer. The opening of resident diplomatic missions in our respective capitals was partly due to the need, which we both felt, to establish closer contact in view of our common interests in the development of Europe. Ireland and Finland share a common European vision. We are both looking forward to the challenges and opportunities which the enlargement of the European Union offers, and to the immeasurable enrichment in economic, social and cultural terms of the entire Union which that enlargement will bring with it.
In the wider world, Irish and Finnish soldiers have a long tradition of working closely and harmoniously together in UN peacekeeping operations throughout the world. They worked as next-door neighbours to Irish troops in Lebanon and I have direct experience of the depth of their friendship from a recent visit to the Irish Forces headquarters at Camp Clark in Kosovo. That day I sat down to a spectacular lunch at tables borrowed from the Finns, plates, knives and forks borrowed from the Finns and chefs borrowed from the Finns. Later I discovered that the Finnish troops meanwhile had to eat a cold ready-made lunch on their knees. No greater love can a man have for the President of a neighbouring country than he gives up his hot lunch, his table and his cook!
In that personal story of our UN service we see two peoples who find it easy to get on well together. We share a conviction in the importance of this form of intervention as a means of upholding human rights and the international rule of law. Our shared experience in this field shows that small countries can achieve a great deal by making a practical contribution to peace in some of the world’s most intractable trouble spots.
We in Ireland have considerable admiration for the Finnish quality of persistence, sisu, through which the genius of the Finnish people and their culture endured to survive centuries of foreign occupation. It was this characteristic that enabled you to emerge in the 19th century with major contributions to world culture such as the Kalevala which arose from the vast folk tradition of Finland. And of course, Finland has also made an immense contribution to the world’s store of human creativity through architecture and the immortal works of that great genius Sibelius.
We in Ireland have also been blessed to have a rich folklore and cultural tradition which has provided a creative well from which successive generations of Irish writers, dancers and musicians have drawn. While Ireland was not so fortunate as Finland in maintaining the primacy of our native language, which suffered greatly in the nineteenth century, a new generation of Irish writers emerged in the last century and colonised the English language with such success, that they carried off more than Ireland’s fair share of Nobel Prizes for Literature. That tradition has been carried on with distinction in recent years by the Ulster poet, Seamus Heaney, whose words have an appropriate ring as, with the help of our European colleagues, we seek to build a better future for both the people of Northern Ireland and the expanding European Union:
“hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells”.
We in Ireland have experienced many miracles in recent years. To the founders of the European Union, who sought to build a united and peaceful Europe, this next phase of enlargement would have seemed equally miraculous. We have learned that the power to create miracles, to achieve what once seemed impossible, lies in our own hands and in what we are capable of achieving through partnership with others. We look forward to pursuing that partnership, and deep friendship, with the people of Finland, in the years ahead.
In conclusion, I should like to invite your guests to rise and raise their glasses to drink a toast to the health of the President of the Republic of Finland and to the prosperity of the people of Finland.