ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MC ALEESE, AT LAUNCH OF CENTRE FOR IRISH STUDIES
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY MC ALEESE, AT LAUNCH OF CENTRE FOR IRISH STUDIES, MURDOCK UNIVERSITY, PERTH
Minister, Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Mr O’Sullivan, Mr Johnson, distinguished guests, friends of the Centre for Irish Studies.
Thank you for the very warm greeting you have extended to me.
I am particularly pleased that at the outset of my Presidency I should have the opportunity to visit Australia - the country which, in terms of the proportion of its population, is the most Irish country in the world beyond the shores of Ireland itself. I was elected President of Ireland at a time of immense change in Ireland. Today’s Ireland is a vibrant country - with the youngest population in Europe - which celebrates its past and is confident of its future.
As we look to the unwritten script of the Twenty First Century, Ireland stands at the threshold of a period of peace and prosperity which was only a wild dream a few decades ago. While we are deeply involved in the process of European construction, itself an exciting and hope-filled adventure of peace, we are also determined, as my visit signifies, to maintain and develop close contact with our extensive global family and to demonstrate our great pride in the achievements of those of Irish birth and heritage scattered across the world. We want to keep those relationships fresh and fluent so that each person who cherishes his or her Irish identity will feel a strong bond of belonging to a dynamic culture, an ancient citizenry and a modern people.
It has always been important for us to know that we have had the support of friends in Australia and elsewhere in our efforts to achieve an enduring political settlement to the tragedy of Northern Ireland. We appreciate the contribution of Australia, both through the dedicated work of Australia’s former Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephen, in advancing an important phase of the discussions in the early years of this decade and through its continuing contribution to the International Fund for Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement provided for a new beginning in the relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South on the island of Ireland, and between Britain and Ireland. It provides a framework for consigning division and conflict to the past and for building a new future based on partnership and mutual respect.
The process of change embraces not just the island of Ireland but our wider family throughout the world, I am therefore delighted to be here this morning at Murdoch University to officially launch and to support this first Centre in Australia specifically dedicated to Irish Studies. I want to warmly congratulate and to thank all those associated with this impressive and timely project. Your Vice Chancellor, Professor Steven Schwarz, has taken a deep personal interest in it since the idea of establishing such a Centre was first proposed to him. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Mr Joe O’Sullivan and to the entire membership of the Australian Irish Heritage Association who have dedicated themselves with such generosity and commitment to fulfilling their charter of fostering Australia’s Irish heritage. I also want to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of the members of the Celtic Club - represented this morning by their distinguished President Bob Johnson. For almost 100 years the Celtic Club has maintained the proud tradition of contributing to the life of Western Australia and of providing a special home for maintaining and promoting those strong and precious links with Ireland. Those links brought a cultural richness to this young country and adapting as they did to a multi-ethnic, multi-faceted society, those links freshened and refreshed Irish culture at home.
This morning we should not forget that these were links which could have faded - and indeed might have done so - but for the determination and resourcefulness of so many, over the years, who cherished and celebrated their heritage and contributed it with pride and enthusiasm to the remarkable multicultural society you have achieved in contemporary Australia. Among them there were those who had a pervasive influence on Australian literature. It is said that the first play produced on Australian soil on 4 June 1789 was “The Recruiting Officer” by the Irishman George Farquhar, an event celebrated in the memorable novel by that renowned Australian writer, so proud of his Irish heritage - the incomparable Thomas Keneally.
I was particularly interested, when told that an early edition of the Australian Encyclopaedia identified three novels as being in a class unto themselves, to learn that two of these were written by Irishmen - “ For the Term of His Natural Life” by Marcus Clarke, from Galway, and “Robbery Under Arms” by Rolfe Bolderwood who came to Sydney from County Sligo.
It has even been suggested that Australian literature began in 1819 with the publication of the youthful Wentworth’s “Statistical, Historical and Political Description of New South Wales”. And then there came Macartney Abbott, whose account of Australians in the Boer War, ranks with the other great literature of its class. Edwin James Brady depicted the colour and humour of early European adventures in the outback. And eventually Jules Archibald, born in County Kildare and John Haynes of Irish parents, founded the “Bulletin”, Australia’s first successful literary magazine, which provided a much needed opening for women and men of literary ambition and achievement to tell their stories in and of Australia. Between its red covers the Irish figured conspicuously, including Daley, O’Dowd, the Quinns, Boake, Abbott, Brady, Farrell, Wright and Dennis many of whom wrote much that long survived them.
If we add the names of Joseph Murphy, Christopher Brennan and Niall Brennan, your own Mary Durack, as well as “John O’Brien”, John Finnamore, Gerald Harry Supple, Henry Kendall, Marion Miller Knowles and Alice Guerin Crist we have a more complete list of those whose prose and poetry took - at least some - of their inspiration from Ireland which was for all of them either the land of their birth or of their heritage.
And today Australia cherishes a host of truly remarkable writers - it would be invidious to attempt a comprehensive list for fear of invoking the wrath of the excluded - but all of whom in their different disciplines enrich us in a most profound manner. It is because of their genius and the work and inspiration of others that our relationship is now shining brighter than ever before.
Indeed it should also be acknowledged in this place of educational excellence and on such an important inaugural occasion, that the Irish influence on cultural and educational Australia goes far beyond the impressive range of great literary personalities and indeed beyond any purely demographic statistical assessment of Irish Australia. It is entirely reasonable to say that, primarily through the Catholic Church, Irish priests, nuns, brothers and laity staffed and shaped, constructed and advanced a highly significant element of the Australian educational system - they were vital to the emergence and development of the genius of many of the outstanding cultural personalities of Irish descent in this land, and they also contributed to the emergence and development of the wider environment from which Australian culture and identity draws its own unique reality.
Your new Centre at this University will draw on all of this and indeed on much more as you work in cooperation with the other Universities in Western Australia to deepen and develop the study of Australia’s Irish heritage and of contemporary Irish society. I am glad that through the Australian Irish Heritage Association you are working closely with our Embassy and that you are also in direct contact with University College Dublin which has the only Chair in Australian History outside Australia. Through the World Wide Web you will exchange ideas with Irish Studies’ Centres at the Universities of North London, Liverpool and Leicester as well as with many similar third level institutions across the United States.
All of this welcome and exciting new development will ensure - indeed it must ensure - greater contacts between students and scholars, more direct relationships between institutions and societies - for ultimately the work of Governments and diplomats, the signing of Treaties and Conventions, will mean little if it is not consolidated by genuine and meaningful encounters between peoples. That is why educational and cultural relationships are vital to the promotion of dialogue between nations - the sharing of time and talent, the development of knowledge and understanding, the construction of links between academic institutions at all levels and the allocation of resources to the valuable exchanges inherent in academic mobility. These are, and must be, to the fore among those important elements which help to guarantee international harmony and peaceful progress. They are the stepping stones to a civilized world in which the nations and the peoples of the earth come to look at each other with joyful curiosity, come to be comfortable with difference and construct an ethic based on mutual respect.
In conclusion, it is my welcome responsibility, having declared the Centre for Irish Studies at Murdoch University to be formally open, to warmly congratulate its first director, the distinguished Australian Scholar and former visiting Professor of History at University College Dublin, Associate Professor Bob Reece and to wish him every success in this important task he has so graciously undertaken.