REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS AND PRESENTATION OF A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD TO MAEVE BINCHY
Dia dhibh go léir a chairde.
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for that very warm welcome. Thank you also to Madeleine Keane and the Sunday Independent for their kind invitation to the Irish Book Awards for this celebration of the very best of Ireland’s creative writing talent.
Somerset Maugham once said “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” There are plenty such miseries and we certainly have need of refuge from them for the mood of the nation is about as far from celebratory as it is possible to be. But rather than concede to Maugham that what we are engaged in here is some form of escapism, or avoidance or diversion from life’s hardships maybe we should ponder first the contribution to our lives made by those whose genius with words and stories can enthral us, educate us, perplex us, engage us, challenge us, impress us and, importantly, reassure us that in each generation Ireland continues to produce outstanding writers of national and international distinction, in whose reflected glory, recognition and respect we take pride. That pride is an important resource at a time of low national self-confidence.
While fully respecting the nature of my role, I want to acknowledge the understandable distress and dismay being experienced by people all around the country who feel fearful about their future. We are confronted by massive problems and while so many of our people had no role whatever in creating these problems, each one of us does now have a role in resolving them. In facing up to the present difficulties, there needs to be candour, accountability and debate to ensure that the grave failures of the past are never repeated. I firmly hope that our people, despite their anger, will constructively support one another through this torrid time to renewed confidence, economic growth and prosperity.
Throughout our history, the Irish people have been tried and tested in all sorts of grim ways. We have proven ourselves to be extraordinarily resilient and now we need to draw on that resilience more than ever. We are more than capable of overcoming our present difficulties and it is surely in our best interests to lift our hearts, minds and voices beyond mere recrimination to confronting the stark realities and consequences so that we can put them behind us as quickly as possible. We need to do that for all the individuals, families and communities who are so deeply affected in their daily lives through losing their jobs, reduced household income, renewed emigration, negative equity and the cumulative draining weight of coming to terms with these crisis events. The quicker we can stabilise our finances and return our economy to growth, the sooner we will be able to relieve the distress being experienced on the ground.
Let no-one claim that Ireland is anything less than a great country. Our people are entitled to be defined by much more than this period of economic turmoil. This is a country where community matters to our people, where social inclusion and social justice matters to our people, where people invest their very best in a kaleidoscope of endeavours that build up to a life rich in civic spirit that is the envy of others. In a fragile world where uncertainty is easy to find, I am certain of one thing - the Irish people will rise to this challenge. They will face it down and in a time shorter than we dare to imagine right now, we will be able to say - it was difficult, it hurt, but Ireland got through it.
We also know that more than once in our history we have gone from mess to meitheal to miracle, not simply thanks to the richness of our often overlooked community solidarity, not simply because of our innate resilience as a people but thanks to the original thinkers, the creative minds, the innovators, the polemicists and provocative intelligences that have sustained a culture of the written word in which this small island has produced some of the world’s greatest writers, among them four Nobel literary prize winners and a litany of others whose widely acclaimed work has staked our claim to a prominent place on the global stage. Our pride in them consoles us. It fuels our common sense of identity - for this is a public and a civic gathering and, as such, an important acknowledgment that we are not decoupled from community or from a shared and strong commitment to the common good.
Those nominated tonight are a mix of renowned writers and those soon to become renowned. Each has a personal story to tell of their career as writers - the odyssey of effort, of times of buoyant success and crushing disappointment, of occasional self-doubt and the miracle of renewed confidence in the integrity of their vocation as writers. I congratulate each of them on the fine achievements which have brought them here tonight and thank them for providing us, not just with a refuge, but with the hard evidence of the reservoirs of ability we have, the capacity for mutual encouragement we possess and the future we are capable of crafting between us.
Occasionally in life you meet a person who has the capacity to make you smile and feel good no matter what the mood. If the world is divided into radiators and drains, this lady is one of life’s most natural radiators of all that is best in the human condition. Maeve Binchy is known and loved throughout the world as a writer and as a person of humour, humanity, empathy and endurance.
Someone remarked recently that what we could do with right now is ‘Maeve on tap.’ That is quite an accolade in itself and it is also an accurate summary of how Maeve is regarded as a writer and an Irishwoman here at home. Maeve exemplifies a way of being where success and keeping your feet on the ground are not mutually exclusive, where hope is not artificially inflated with hubris, where to encourage the talent of others is more important than precious one-upmanship, where the glass is always half full rather than half-empty.
Ernest Hemingway once said that “A writer should create living people; people, not characters.” Maeve’s writing takes that to heart for her stories are populated by everyday folk and their lives are explored, revealed and relayed with a craftswomanship that elevates them way beyond the ordinary. In her inimitable way, she bravely sets before us a philosophy of life that is itself not cynical, embittered, narcissistic, rootless or ungenerous, though some of those who people her stories are capable of all sorts of meanness, petty prejudices and small-mindedness. There is no false nostalgia or rose tinted contact lens but here is an empathetic and honest telling of lives lived inside a tight community solidarity.
We know when we read Maeve that here is someone with a passionate interest in other people, a profound curiosity, the eavesdropper of others conversations, the observer of others lives, the nosey parker who is not up to mischief but up to good. If people all over the world take refuge in the stories she spins out of the lives of men and women coping with life’s ills then the good she does is considerably more than the quantum of books she sells or of the audiences who watch her films. There is unquantifiable comfort, fun, company, entertainment, relaxation, excitement, insight, intrigue and absorption. They justify many times over this lifetime achievement award which it is my privilege and honour to present to a much loved Irishwoman and author, Maeve Binchy. Comhghairdeas agus gura fada buan tu a Maeve uasal. Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.