REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE WELSH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LUNCH ON TUESDAY
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE WELSH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LUNCH ON TUESDAY, 3 DECEMBER, 2002
Prif Weinidog Cymru
Swyddfa’r Llwydd
Is-Ysgrifennydd Seneddol
Is mór an onóir dom bheith i Tionól Náisiúnta na Breataine Bige inniu. Bronnann Muintir na h-Éireann, bhur gcomharsanaigh, gach dea-ghuí oraibh.
It is a great honour to join you today in the National Assembly for Wales.
I bring you the warm greetings and best wishes of your close neighbours, the Government and people of Ireland and I thank you for your kind invitation.
It is exactly fifty years since Dylan Thomas exhorted a world that was to become mesmerized by his passionate vocabulary,
“Do not go gentle into that good night….
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
His, a melancholic age, post world war, sick of the waste of so many lives, anxious that those who had breath in their bodies would use it well.
Nesta Wyn Jones the poet of the next generation was to write:
“we were born when the dust was clearing
From the remains of slaughter and burning…….
We’d come at a soft time
Into a world middling blest….”
And now a new generation grows up in a Wales that has its own Parliament. They grow up as members of the European Union, a miraculous partnership between the winners and losers of the catastrophic wars that blighted the twentieth century. They grow up in a society that has time now to enjoy the resurgence of interest in its membership of the Celtic family of nations. They grow up in a Wales, asserting its unique identity, showcasing its own genius with a fresh dynamism and vibrancy. This is a generation more than “middling blest”.
And you as leaders and inspirers of this generation are entitled to the pride you must surely feel as Wales, a small country with a big voice and a big personality, makes of itself a remarkable centre of gravity, culturally, economically, socially and politically. You are to be warmly congratulated for the way in which you have ensured that devolution is making a real and positive difference to Welsh life and to Wales’ relationships with the wider world.
In Ireland too there is a generation which is more than “middling blest”. Our economy has been the success story of Europe for the past number of years. The Peace process has recalibrated our relationship with Northern Ireland and with Great Britain, opening up a landscape of real opportunity for partnership and mutual prosperity. The changing backdrops in both our countries have allowed us additional space to develop our relationship and we in Ireland are very pleased at the new and growing links between Ireland and Wales. The British-Irish Council, which was established under the Good Friday Agreement, now puts a structure on that relationship and already a number of important initiatives are underway in the Council which we believe will have a practical and mutually beneficial effect on the lives of people throughout these islands.
Wales and Ireland have remarkably similar ambitions. Quite simply we want the best for our people. We want the embrace of prosperity to be as wide as it possibly can be. We want an end to lives frustrated by underachievement. We want an era where the talents of all our citizens are helped to blossom and where people can live fulfilled, humanly decent lives in a strong and high achieving egalitarian civic society. We both know the huge importance of education and training and of modernization across the business and industrial spectrum. We both aspire to being in the foremost division of today and tomorrow’s knowledge economy. We both know the truth of the old Irish expression - two shortens the road and so we are both actively developing partnerships in the wider world, in the European Union and beyond. We have opportunities others on our planet can still only dream of. We have our problems too but despite the current global economic slowdown, the truth is that for those with vision there is real potential. In that context, I can assure you that we in Ireland value our special partnership with Wales very highly and are anxious to grow that relationship to new levels of interaction. As Celtic peoples we love poetry and often find there the voices of a distilled wisdom to guide our paths. In Thomas’ great poem some hear only the rage at a father’s painful death. I hear a voice saying use these days well. Live them with a passion. That is what you are doing - bringing a new passion to Wales that is deservedly earning you, admiration and respect.
I am privileged to represent a dynamic modern Ireland as a visitor to a dynamic, modern Wales. Two nations moving out from under history’s clouds, two old friends making bright new futures for themselves, two good neighbours who want to see each other do well, who wish each other well and who look forward to many shared memories and achievements on the journey ahead.
Thank you for your welcome and attention.
Go raibh maith agaibh
Diolch yn fawr iawn