Speech by President Michael D. Higgins at a Garden Party Celebrating Communities in All Their Diversity
Áras an Uachtaráin, Wednesday, 19th June 2024
A cháirde,
Tá áthas orm féin agus ar Saidhbhín fáilte a fhearadh roimh uilig go hÁras an Uachtaráin tráthnóna. Tá súil agam go bhfuil sibh ag baint taitnimh as bhur gcuairt ar an teach agus na gairdíní.
Sabina and I are delighted to welcome you all to Áras an Uachtaráin this afternoon. I hope you are all enjoying your visit to the house and gardens.
Sabina and I so welcome the opportunity that the garden parties provide for us to meet various members of communities, community groups and activists who, in their different ways, are using their skills and expertise to build inclusive communities across Ireland.
We are delighted to acknowledge their work and to hear from them of their experiences as we invite them to have a celebration as they enjoy for a while the house and the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin.
The theme of today’s garden party, ‘Communities in All Their Diversity’, celebrates the work of so many people who contribute, day in, day out, so profoundly and practically to the lives of their communities, be it in creating and sustaining places that offer a sense of belonging, of care, of shared interests, of hospitality that can enable us all to benefit from a flourishing and engaged society, a society comprised of active and participative communities.
In deciding on the theme, ‘Communities in All Their Diversity’, for today’s garden party, Sabina and I wished to recognise and celebrates the richness that diversity brings to communities across Ireland, how it makes modern Ireland a rich tapestry of cultures, ethnicities and diversity, where legacies of the past, experiences of flight, survival and resilience can be exchanged, added to the shared stories of ourselves and shared.
Mar Uachtarán na hÉireann, I have made the theme of ‘Participation and Transformation’ a special initiative of my Presidency. The promotion of a more inclusive society I wanted to be a cornerstone of my work, and is informed by my firm belief that everyone in Ireland has a valuable contribution to make, that society is strengthened when it supports, and is shaped by, a diversity of experiences and perspectives.
It was wonderful to see that diversity reflected in the candidature of so many from different circumstances contesting the recent Local Elections.
I salute them all. I salute those who helped them with us today. Elected to a Council I served for decades – Galway City Council – is Helen Ogbu who made history as Galway’s first African woman to be elected in Galway City East.
Enabling participation requires us to recognise the significant obstacles to participation that are faced by so many people. These obstacles include isolation from resources, exclusion and discrimination on the basis of difference.
Achieving equality is not simply about achieving equal opportunities for the individual, but something much deeper – how we are challenged to show a willingness to change our spaces, our systems, our institutions so as to ensure that they actively drive and encourage inclusion.
Inclusive and ethical societies can only grow from communities that are ethical in their structure and practice – communities that work together, in solidarity, that recognise the needs of all their members including, in particular, those who are vulnerable and marginalised. Such societies have been the ideal, the utopias for which egalitarians struggled throughout the ages.
All across Ireland we have people who, through generations, have contributed in contradictory circumstances to their communities in so many meaningful ways. Today Sabina and I pay tribute to you all and thank you for that important contribution.
While structural change needs to be and must be pushed, putting the stamp of humanity on the mechanisms of survival are also needed, and such aims must be achieved.
It is critical that we continue to work to build and maintain that strong sense of community in facing challenges together. Doing so can offer so much potential for the flourishing and deep fulfilment of our citizens, a fulfilment that is so much more enriching than any narrower individualised commodification of citizenship premised on consumption and inexorable accumulation.
It is a great pleasure, therefore, to have the opportunity to welcome here today so many of you who undertake that work with generosity and a true commitment to shaping communities which are inclusive and welcoming to all their members – groups like Spirasi, which works for the rehabilitation of asylum seekers and refugees who have experienced torture, and is currently marking its 25th anniversary.
Others present today, such as Bohemians Football Club, Doras, Migrant’s Rights Centre, Irish Refugee Council and so many others work with communities to assist with reception and introduction issues, ensuring migrants’ human rights are upheld at a time of alarming tolerance to serious human rights violations against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants that has developed across Europe.
I am delighted that staff from the Open Doors Initiative are with us today, an organisation that provides training, education and employment opportunities to some of the marginalised members of our society.
The range and the spread of organisations that are represented here today is impressive and an inspiring demonstration of the generosity, social conscience and willingness to engage and participate that exists amongst our citizens.
Your involvement and commitment to others includes many areas of community living, including working to combat discrimination and racism, enabling people of all ages and backgrounds to flourish and reach their potential, making your neighbourhoods inclusive and welcoming places to live, and striving in so many other areas to create communities, which offer their residents a shared sense of belonging.
Tomorrow we mark International Refugee Day, and I am delighted that there are so many individuals and groups present today who work to assist migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees who have arrived in Ireland, helping to navigate the often challenging initial period from the point of arrival up to hopefully a point of inclusion, fulfilment and security in society.
May I suggest that we use International Refugee Day 2024 as an opportunity to reflect on how the refusal to seek to understand migration in its full range of sources is causing such havoc. Seeking to understand, promoting an understanding of the drivers behind forced migration is so significantly absent.
We must reflect on what evidence there is for Europe’s contribution to having a constructive engagement with migration – have the Member States of the European Union faced the present populations of Africa, South America, Asia and acknowledged the devastation of colonising actions and the many consequences of such that include climate change?
Acknowledgement of the past clears the way for informed and innovative present and future action.
Where is the engagement, we must ask, with study and seeking to understand the different sources of such issues as conflict, climate change, hunger, poverty, reconnecting with family and aspirations for a life of security free from hunger, poverty and fulfilment of one’s life capacity? Is that present in the discourse of Europe as future positions are being considered?
The rise of exclusion of the ‘other’ across Europe is deeply troubling, but it can be reversed. We must work to ensure that a new discourse is achieved, one that contains accurate information, including such positive facts as that which point to how migrants, when they are allowed, contribute 10-12 percent of global GDP. We must challenge those who always and negatively describe migratory activity on a migratory planet as “the problem of migration”.
Values such as solidarity, openness, kindness and compassion are at the heart of all of your work. That work, and you yourselves are what is confronting the rise of hatred and anti-migrant feeling across Europe and the world.
I suggest that we must never lose sight of the possibilities that remain for us in the pursuit of conditions of a shared peace; how our lives could be liberated and fulfilled without war, famine, hunger and greed in a shared, just world that eschews the poisonous ideals of imperialism, racism and ‘Othering’ and embraces the decent instincts of humanity; how through shared efforts, such as your own, we can build a society of inclusion at home, while working together with other nations to build a peaceful, sustainable, hopeful world.
It is within our communities and through the discourse heard by those within communities, as well as formal education, that our young people are first exposed to the value of peaceful life with nature and each other, to the important concept of citizenship.
In our contemporary circumstances, we have to consider how we engage with each other, how we speak to each other, how we listen, or don’t listen, how taken-for-granted assumptions prevail, often with little questioning, how narratives around such fundamental issues as war and peace can become accepted and even hegemonic.
Having an early experience of a welcoming, warm community life, of inhabiting, in conditions of change, a space that is shared with others, is a critical factor in shaping the future citizens our youngest will become. It is so important that communities promote a sense of solidarity, inclusiveness and cohesion amongst its members to transform, re-imagine, restore and renew, identifying what is necessary to be achieved, and confronting and challenging obstacles to equality.
I have seen areas around the country open their hearts to those arriving at our shores seeking refuge. I have seen so many examples of care and compassion as members of a community come together to fundraise, to look after their most vulnerable, their older citizens, their sick, and to lobby for much needed facilities for their children, or for their marginalised members.
At the heart of this activity lies an acknowledgement of the crucial importance of the public space, the public world, and a citizen awareness that brings with it, not only a sense of belonging, but a sense of responsibility for those with whom we share that public space.
Sadly, in 2024, we need reminding that we are also citizens of a wider global community. In 2015, the international community through the conduit of the United Nations set out a clear and widely agreed roadmap to meet our global challenges head on. We collectively agreed to do all we can to attain 17 goals for a better world. By the year 2030, we must have achieved these Sustainable Development Goals.
We are now past the midway point and, worryingly, we are some way off their achievement; indeed, in some areas we are even regressing. We have a historic opportunity, and indeed duty, to lay the foundations of a new model for human flourishing and social harmony. We must confront the militaristic rhetoric that is now undermining our parliamentarism, our democracy itself.
As members of that global community, let us all commit to playing our role, in working together to ensure that future generations will inhabit a more just and equitable society.
Those who hold power, or who have been elected to do so, to speak for states must also speak. We are living through a period when militarism has replaced diplomacy. Indeed we have been told that we are at the beginning of a new nuclear race.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2017, has told us that the combined spending on nuclear weapons grew by $10.7 billion to $91.4 billion in 2023 over the last five years while $387 billion has been spent on nuclear weapons during this time. When one thinks of what could be achieved if such sums were not deferred to preparations for war.
May I thank you all, therefore, for the profound and valuable contribution you make to your communities and to our society. The work you do in all its guises demonstrates the spirit of active participation that animates our communities and the lives of those with whom we share that communal space.
May I take the opportunity to also thank the many people who make today the special celebratory day it is – the musicians and entertainers, including harpist Mary Kelly, the African Gospel Choir, the Colm Ó hArgáin Group, Martin Nolan, the Atkinson Sisters, Havana Club Trio, Muireann Bradley, Rachel Lavelle, Caleb Kunelle.
May I also thank our MC today Leon Diop whose podcast, ‘Black and Irish’, about the lived experiences of black and mixed-race people living in Ireland through conversations about culture, society and family, is such a powerful contribution to an inclusive discourse. Of course I would like to thank all of the Áras staff, the St. John of Gods volunteers, An Garda Síochána and the first-aiders, for their hard work ensuring that today runs smoothly.
Sabina and I wish you a most enjoyable day here at Áras an Uachtaráin.
Beir beannacht. Bain taitneamh as an lá is gúim gach rath oraibh don todhchaí.