ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY ROBINSON, ON AWARD OF DOCTORATE IN HUMANITIES
ADDRESS ON AWARD OF DOCTORATE IN HUMANITIES, HONORIS CAUSA, BY THE UNIVERSITY OF RENNES
M. Rector, M. President, Professor Lespagnol, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a privilege to be here today as President of Ireland to receive this Doctorate in Humanities, honoris causa, from University of Rennes II and to address your distinguished gathering. I am very conscious of the role of Rennes University in developing Irish studies, including the Irish language, here in France, and pay tribute to the University's tireless efforts that come from a genuine love of learning and debate.
I should also say that I am particularly moved that this occasion is taking place in a hall dedicated to the memory of Victor Basch, the founding President of the League of Human Rights.
As you have mentioned in your most generous address, I serve as Head of State at a time of great renewal in Ireland, at a time when it is both challenging and exciting to be Irish. I would like in my address today to trace some of the reasons for that renewal and to try to look forward to the challenges and difficulties that lie ahead.
I was born into a generation, which, to some extent, took our political freedom for granted. The late 1950s and 1960s saw a dramatic reforging of Irish economic policy based upon confidence in our ability to compete internationally and to attract foreign investment to sustain development and growth. This period symbolically reached its zenith in 1973, when Ireland became a member of the European Economic Community.
Gaining membership of the European family was, of course, more than just part of the modernising process. It was one of the positive turning points in our history. It was to Europe that Ireland had contributed so much culturally and spiritually in the Dark Ages and it was to Europe, especially France, we looked in later centuries for inspiration and salvation. Europe opened to us a new window of opportunity on the world, not just in economic terms, but also in cultural and political terms. Up until 1973, Ireland was, in a sense, as one political scientist put it, "an island behind an island". Our view of the outside world was all-too-often over the shoulder of Britain. By joining in the great European experiment we rediscovered our European roots and our place in the world. We discovered that our history was not just one of colonisation and forced emigration, but one which shared much, philosophically, culturally and politically with the rest of western Europe.
We soon discovered that, by joining our friends in Europe, we were, in a very real sense, coming home. We were reconnecting with our roots. That experience, I believe, has been the major contributory factor to what we see as an Irish renewal today. Our people no longer see themselves as victims of a sad colonial history, but rather confident inheritors of a European destiny. Today we see Ireland with a growth rate far in excess of European or OECD levels, low inflation and low interest rates - a country ready to participate in the single currency of Europe.
But there is more to our European renewal than economics. Here in France, in this year of l'Imaginaire Irlandais, the festival of contemporary Irish culture, you can witness the rebirth and renewal of Irish culture. A renaissance which is reaching out to the future is also drawing from the confidence of its roots. Ireland which was once castigated as "no country for young men" is today thriving with the artistic endeavours of young men and young women, confident in expressing themselves as Irish and European. It is probably fitting to quote that slightly older of young men, Seamus Heaney, our Noble laureate, who wrote about the new generation of his community in Northern Ireland. The sentiments apply equally, North and South, I think:
And next thing, suddenly, this change of mood.
Books open in the newly wired kitchens.
Young heads that might have dozed a life away
against the flanks of milking cows were busy
paving and pencilling their first causeways
across the prescribed texts. The paving stones
of quadrangles came next and a grammar
of imperatives, the new age of demands.
They would banish the conditional forever,
this generation born impervious to
the triumph in our cries of de profundis.
Our faith in winning by enduring most
they made anathema, intelligences
brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.
(From the Canton of Expectation, Haw Lantern 1987)
As fully committed Europeans we are not sceptical about our place in the future of Europe and we are anxious to play a full and positive part in the great debate now underway. At the same time we have links with and understandings of other parts of the world, a strength, which, I believe, shall be called upon more as Europe develops further its external political dimension.
I have spoken much about the new confidence in Ireland, the fruition of the efforts of the century. But what of the future and the opportunities that lie ahead?
First and foremost we cannot ever forget the demands on all of us to work towards a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. We must seek a solution, which allows all those living on the island of Ireland to feel at peace with their political institutions and allegiances. There can only be an inclusive solution - a solution, which includes and accepts the legitimate rights, aspirations and allegiances of all. We can look to Europe for inspiration. The European Union has created institutions and even a fledgling political culture which goes beyond the simplicities of the nineteenth century nation state. A solution to the Northern Ireland problem is, I believe, close, but it requires a leap of faith and courage to be achieved.
Northern Ireland is but one example of conflict from differing identities. This question of accommodating identities and allegiances is one of the great challenges as we approach the end of the twentieth century. The enormous tragedy we have witnessed in the Balkans makes us aware that identities remain strong, no matter how great the globalization of communications and ideas. In France you have great diversity between your regions. Today, I am in Rennes, in Brittany, a region which is justly proud of its Celtic culture and identity, something it shares with Ireland and other Celtic communities elsewhere in Europe. We must learn to accept that individuals may have many levels of allegiance - personal, family, local, regional, ethnic, national, continental and so forth. The challenge to us, whether in Northern Ireland the Balkans or in the European Union is to develop institutions which recognise and tolerate mixed allegiance and which do not place them in conflict. We must construct a world which turns divisions into tolerant diversity. That may well be the greatest challenge of the coming years.