SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ON THE PRESENTATION OF NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION OF NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS ÁRAS
A Oirircis, A Shoilsí, a Aire is a Uaisle Uile.
Cuireann sé áthas orm agus ar m’fhear céile, Mairtín, fáilte ó chroí a chur romhaibh go léir go hÁras an Uachtaráin. Tá mé an-bhuíoch as na beannachtaí a chur sibh orainn agus ar mhuintir na hÉireann uilig. Tá súil agam go mbeidh athbhliain faoi mhaise agaibh agus gúim sonas, sláinte agus buansíocháin oraibh go léir.
Your Excellency, Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Excellencies, Minister Treacy, Ladies and Gentlemen, Girls and Boys.
Martin and I are delighted to welcome each one of you to Áras an Uachtaráin and to extend to you and those you represent our good wishes for this New Year. We thank you for the very kind greetings and good wishes you have extended to us and to the people of Ireland.
Many of you are by now old and valued friends and it is good to see you back here again. Among us are quite a few newcomers, still new to Ireland and its ways so I extend a special welcome to you and I hope you are finding this an easy place to feel at home in and to make friends in. A very particular welcome to those who are representing the newest member states of the European Union. I congratulate Romania and Bulgaria on their accession and wish them well as our new partners and colleagues on the road to a shared future.
In this room are representatives of the vast majority of nations and peoples who share this planet. Some live in longstanding prosperity and peace. Others, like Ireland, are experiencing both prosperity and peace for the first time. Yet more face endemic poverty and conflict. Some nations are formidable allies to one another and some are even more formidable enemies. Yet wherever in the world men and women raise their children they all want for them the same things, the chance to grow up safely and healthily, to get a good education, to have the opportunity to blossom in peace and to prosper. Somehow though the dark side of humanity manages too often to overwhelm those noble ambitions with hatred, greed, oppression, selfishness and misunderstanding. So many lives and hopes are wasted day in and day out and yet we have to acknowledge how indebted we are to you and to all those who work for peace and respect among nations for, without your steady diplomatic work, without your ability to explain one nation to another, one way of thinking to another, one culture to another, our world would be infinitely worse off. The web of collegial working relationships that you build and sustain makes us more robust, more resilient, more effective as a global community. Our hopes for a better world, a happier world are very dependent on all that you do to enhance international relations. Yours is a very profound vocation, often seen as sociable and glamorous but in reality very difficult, demanding and tough. We are grateful to all of you who chose this vocation and to your families whose self-sacrifice enables you to make this your life’s work.
The days of 2007 which stretch ahead invite us to redouble our efforts to make sure that this year is used well to solve the many problems which beset the world and which require concerted international cooperation if they are to be tackled with any hope of success. The problems run the gamut from drug trafficking to terrorism, from sectarianism to global warming, from human degradation to the Aids pandemic, from conflicts between nations to conflicts within nations.
Ireland has long been committed to promoting a more secure and just international environment by pursuing a foreign policy which accords with the ideals enshrined in our Constitution and conforms to the principles of the United Nations Charter.
As Mr. Ban Ki-Moon begins his term as U.N. Secretary General, each member nation has an opportunity to recommit with passion to this most necessary of international institutions so that the formidable and unique energy of international solidarity can be brought to bear on the thorny issues he and his colleagues have to face and hopefully face down.
The Middle East Peace Process and its consequences for the stability of the region and indeed the world are high on the international political agenda. Ireland is part of the new UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon and I need not tell you how heavy Irish hearts are to see Lebanon in crisis again for we invested twenty years of U.N. service there and were so delighted to see a renewed Lebanon on the path towards stability and reconciliation. We hope to see those days of hope and progress return to stay and soon. The ongoing failure to secure the futures of Palestine and Israel is exacting a heavy toll on the region.
Ireland has long had a very soft heart for Africa. Our missionaries and NGOs express that care daily through the lives they live in solidarity with Africa’s many nations and peoples. At Government level that care is expressed in ever more sophisticated and determined ways. We provided strong political and financial support for the successful electoral process in Democratic Republic of Congo, the first for over forty years, which has provided new hope for the people of that troubled country. A dedicated unit has now been established within the Department of Foreign Affairs to enable Ireland to play a more active role in international conflict prevention and resolution.
Minister Ahern visited Darfur in July 2006 and gave clear messages to the government in Sudan on the need to accept international peacekeepers, to safeguard humanitarian workers, to protect the suffering and to work speedily towards ending that cruel and outrageous conflict. We strongly support international efforts to promote an agreed political settlement to the current conflict in Somalia.
2006 was one of the most important in the 33-year history of Ireland’s official aid programme. In September last year, the Government published the first ever White Paper on Irish Aid which was widely welcomed.
The White Paper is the blueprint that will guide the aid programme as Ireland reaches the UN target of spending 0.7% of our GNP by 2012. By that date, our expenditure on Official Development Assistance will be over €1.5 billion. A commitment of this magnitude reflects the high priority placed by the government and the people of Ireland on this increasingly important area of our foreign policy.
The White Paper sets out a number of new initiatives to enhance Ireland’s unique contribution to the fight against global poverty through development. I saw clearly the power of development aid to change lives on recent visits to Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania. Irish money is bringing education to Lesotho’s remote mountain regions as I saw in Rapokolana school. In Niassa province in Mozambique, an area three times the size of Denmark, I was present when it was declared mine-impact free thanks to work funded by Irish Aid. In Tanzania I met Alais, a leader of the Maasai whose third level education was completed in Ireland with Irish Aid support. Today he is working with his people to help as the world’s most legendary pastoralists adapt to the changing world around them. On that journey through part of Africa I saw people fighting disease, ignorance and poverty and importantly making progress, making changes energised by the assistance of Irish Aid and the meaningful solidarity of strangers.
In Liberia, where Irish troops continue to work, 2006 saw Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first female elected Head of State in Africa, ushering a new era for the previously war-torn Liberia. Irish troops played a key role in the transfer of Charles Taylor to the Special Court in Sierra Leone from where he will soon face trial before the International Criminal court at the Hague. In the past year we also witnessed a welcome cessation of hostilities in Northern Uganda which have blighted the region for two squandered decades. So if stories from Africa’s many children at times drive us to despair it is essential that we remember and acknowledge the stories of courage and of real hope that are being forged there by people of goodwill. Our job is to see that they triumph over all the adversity piled on them by nature and by human nature.
Closer to home, we edge close and closer to triumph over our island’s long history of adversity. Many people can take credit for the considerable changes which have seen the IRA forswear violence and commit exclusively to the path of peaceful politics. While paramilitary loyalism has some distance to go yet, the steps already taken by loyalists towards peaceful transformation are decisive and irreversible. It is sad that the persuasive voice of David Ervine will be absent but we have every reason to hope his vision of a shared, egalitarian Northern Ireland will soon be realised. The political parties who will work together to create that Northern Ireland know precisely what they have to do to bridge the now relatively small gap between them. Progress on the gap issues of policing and power-sharing will represent a truly momentous and historic step for both communities in Northern Ireland, you could say the opportunity of a lifetime. Let’s hope it is taken in the lifetime of the opportunity.
Those in all parties who are working to show the necessary leadership deserve our support and encouragement in the critical weeks of heavy lifting ahead. They should take courage from the many good things that are happening all around us that bring prosperity and peace to all and threat to none, things like the recognition of the shared history of the people on this island when we marked the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising and the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. As we work to reconcile old memories so too we work to build a very different future of unassuming but useful partnership, developing all-island infrastructural cooperation, creating the Single Electricity Market, promoting an island economy, best exemplified by the joint trade delegation from North and South which accompanied the Taoiseach to the Gulf Region this week.
We hope that within the next few weeks the scene will be finally set for the full blossoming of these embryonic new relationships within Northern Ireland and between North and South so that for the first time in this island’s history the people who live here can feel the power of true and mutually respectful partnership. In the meantime, we will continue to promote the reconciliation and healing that is so necessary to the consolidation of peace.
The European Union, led very effectively by the Austrian and Finnish Presidencies, completed the Union’s historic fifth enlargement, Slovenia introduced the euro and Irish was accorded official and working language status. Tá an-áthas agus bród orm, gur bhaineadh an toradh seo amach [I am delighted, and proud, that this result has been achieved].
During the year I visited the embassies of the ten member states who joined the Union back on May 1st 2004, and other community places, where I had the chance to meet many of Ireland’s new citizens. I thank each of the ambassadors, their families, embassy colleagues and communities for a series of wonderful welcomes which gave me great hope that Ireland can be a relaxed place of true welcome for the many emigrants who have come here in search of opportunity, and whose talents we need to secure the country’s continued progress and prosperity. We need each other, as friends, neighbours, colleagues and active co-citizens. We have a lot to learn from one another, a lot to teach one another and so much that we can accomplish together. As it happens the catchphrase “Together”, “le Chéile” in Irish, is the motto for the 50th anniversary of the EU. It is an appropriate motto for all of us for developing our common citizenship of both Ireland and the European Union. Ireland looks forward to working with the German and Portuguese Presidencies to further the great European ambition for a fair and progressive world and we look forward to making sure that here in our own backyard we put that ambition to work.
I know you will all help us to do so, to keep the nations of the world in touch with one another, interested in one another, curious about one another and unafraid of one another. I thank you for this noble work and wish you well personally and professionally in all that lies ahead this year.
Guím rath agus sonas oraibh go léir.
I would now like to propose a toast - TO THE HEADS OF STATE HERE REPRESENTED.