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ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF HER VISIT TO KELLS EDUCATION CENTRE

ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF HER VISIT TO KELLS EDUCATION CENTRE, CO.MEATH ON TUESDAY 28 APRIL, 1998

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for your very warm welcome this afternoon – indeed I’d like to thank everybody in Kells who has welcomed me so hospitably to their town. As one who spent many years as an educationalist – I have a particular interest in being at the Kells Education Centre this afternoon – and to get a flavour for the great work you are doing here with those who want to continue – or to renew – their links with education.

Since my inauguration last November – I have had opportunities to visit many communities throughout Ireland – an to see what they have been doing at local levels – to address needs and to meet the new challenges that come with progress and change. Indeed the changes that Ireland has seen – particularly in the last decade or so – have been dramatic to say the least. With easier and easier access to new technology – and with modern communications facilities – whole new horizons are opening up – new areas of learning and skills – that are transforming peoples lives.

A couple of months ago I met a lady who had recently come through a literacy course – and I was struck by her story – a story that I am sure can be repeated many times over – in every part of Ireland. This woman had ‘missed’ an essential part of her early education and had to confront a literacy problem in recent years – a problem that she had to face when one of the five children she had protected and educated - wrote to her from his new place of work in Germany - and when she found herself ashamed that she was unable to pen a reply. Her sense of anger at being deprived of a basic right was palpable and was matched by an equal sense of confidence and self-esteem at being finally allowed access to the world – or the universe – of education.

Meeting that woman, who had lived with the shame of a predicament which was not of her making, brought home to me how much we need to look at our own place too – to release those who are confined by limited access to education and culture – to empower them to take their rightful place in our own society. That lady’s story is reflected in so many other people, who through economic and domestic circumstance - or simply through chance - are faced with the double burden of lack of access to education and the consequences of its absence from their lives.

Recent years have seen a lot of debate about participation and exclusion. Clearly, participation by all social groups needs to be maximised. It is an essential safeguard – a basic right - for individuals, communities and society. Exclusion from education limits access to employment – it closes doors and shuts off opportunities. It means exclusion from a sense of belonging - exclusion from social participation.

In the emerging changes which we face, there is a readiness and eagerness on the part of the educational establishment to move with the times – to provide for the needs of a changing society – to lay the groundwork in education for meeting the challenges that lie ahead. I recall the words of Newman on the advantages of education, “When the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual”. He went on to say that “ . . it will be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession”.

The achievements in the last twenty to thirty years have been facilitated to a large degree through greater access to education – with free second level and grant-aided third level education opening up new opportunities to the children of a generation that had come through the economic hardships which were part of the convulsion of an emerging young nation. We have done well and we have a lot to show for it. We have seen what an educated workforce can deliver in terms of affluence and improved standards of living. None of us owns education – it is not up to us to apportion it as we see fit. It is a right of everyone to get an education – to get the opportunity to play their part in a society that nurtures all. We can open up even more horizons and reveal new opportunities. To deny that right is to do us all an injustice.

I want to commend the County Meath Vocational Education Committee on their work in bringing education to Kells and the other towns in County Meath – on opening up access to education – both formal and informal – to those who want to play a full part in society – to those who want to be part of the new Ireland. Your mission as providers of education to all the community is an onerous one – and one that you have discharged admirably. I wish you well in your work at the Kells Education Centre – and in your wider mission as educators for the people of County Meath.