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REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST 16 DECEMBER 1998

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST 16 DECEMBER 1998

I would like to thank the Senate of the Queen’s University as well as you Vice-Chancellor, for the great honour of conferring on me the degree from this most distinguished University, my own alma mater. I know it is an honour which places me in the company of men and women who have made outstanding contributions in many different walks of life. I am grateful to be placed in their company. I would also like to congratulate the students of Queen’s who are being conferred today - and to wish them every success for the future. Congratulations to their parents, families, friends and the staff of Queens who helped them through to this proud day. I am particularly pleased to be back among friends - in a place that has had such a profound influence on my life – a place which has been a beacon for me as I charted my own course equipped with the knowledge and skills that I acquired and honed here at Queen’s. I also acquired my life partner here too – my husband Martin – and he shares with me the joy of this day in a place of deep and sustaining shared memories – the place where, like so many young people, we took our first tentative steps into adulthood, grew in confidence and set out into the world of work, of responsibility and of hopes.

It is almost three decades since I first came to Queen’s, and I remember that first day well – the feeling of sheer awe at the scale of the place - the Lanyon Building with its chequer-board entrance, the windiest hallway in Ireland – and yet one that is now warmly familiar and today softened greatly by the welcome and welcoming Visitor Centre. I never cross the Lanyon threshold without that same sense of both awe and familiarity.

I started at Queens at the beginning of the period of turmoil in Northern Ireland that is now, thank God, in the process of drawing to a close. But for my class and those who followed over the next quarter of a century – the backdrop of a changing society – of a society in conflict – has been an additional influence on the directions we all took though college and in later life. Here with our newfound independence we, like you made new friends and forged new bonds with contemporary kindred spirits – friendships which continue to sustain us as they will you over a lifetime. Throughout those significant years of character building, self-development and self-discovery that take place at college, each of us brings something of our own background with us. We also leave something of ourselves here too. For in the years in which I was privileged to teach here, it was the students who taught me much of the treasured store of insights I carry with me. Behind the bluff, the bravado, the feigned cynicism, there was fun and hard work; there was also much quiet suffering often in silence as people coped with serious problems that ambushed and sometimes threatened to overwhelm their lives. I saw their heroism - their sheer tenacity - and was often humbled by it.

Through all facets of university life – the friendships, the romance, sport, debates, political argument, entertainment, not forgetting education – all part of the “Queen’s experience” - you came to see, as I did, your own lives in a different light. This person who graduates today is a long way from the person who first crossed the Lanyon threshold. Now another beginning faces you – offering a litany of choices, opportunities. Decisions will be made which will shape your life. Your degree tells the world what you have accomplished and what you are capable of. But the people you will now meet, work with and live with - they will want to know - what kind of person are you. The degree certificate doesn’t answer that question.

Long ago I divided the world roughly into ‘Cynics’ and ‘Doers’. Cynics look at the world and say “what a mess”. Doers, on the other hand, look at the world and say “what a challenge – what an opportunity – what can I do about the mess”. Cynics may amuse us but mostly they drain our energy. It takes ‘doers’ to lead us forward – to continue on the spiral of progress that brings us to new levels of civilisation and to new horizons. It takes people who have been equipped with the skills to look beyond the obvious – to reach out and explore other domains of knowledge and philosophy – to make the value judgements and to take the calculated risks that are the basis on which progress is made. Cynicism doesn’t require you to get out of bed. Doing means falling into bed bone-tired. But it is the doers who turn a random collection of people and houses into a community, a society where people feel valued and worthwhile. They are the people who give hope and make hopes real.

This year has been a momentous year in the history of this island – it has taken the doers, the people who had the vision and confidence to see a new future - and who had the courage to break out of old moulds - to bring us on a journey to peace and partnership. Out of the ‘mess’ and the chaos of a culture of conflict, with its awful raw wounds, its hatred and passion, we now have opportunities in abundance - and challenges that require fresh mindsets and fresh perspectives. We now have a chance to build a new culture of consensus – a place where there is space and respect for difference and where people work in partnership for the good of all. That new culture will be built by the doers and it will take every pair of hands, every brain to build it.

You are crossing a new threshold into the next phase of your lives where responsibilities for charting a new course in your life will be matched with an opportunity to chart a new course for this island. As you embark on your careers it is worth asking what kind of person will you be. Do you want to be a doer or a cynic?

The approaching millennium is concentrating all our minds on how much time do I have and what do I want to do with it? All these 000’s remind us graphically of the shortness of our lives. We may see in a new century and a new millennium, but what is absolutely certain is that not one of us will see out the new century. This time we have is our precious time to build the causeway to the world we dream of in that as yet unlived millennium. What we do now will shape that future, well or badly. Yours and mine-the choice. Used well, our lives can help create the gateway to a new order of civilisation without the baggage of intolerance, scorn and negativity that are the stock-in-trade of the cynic. Your presence here today shows you are already very capable ‘doers’. May you continue always to be doers.

May the road ahead bring you personal and professional fulfilment and may the days spent here provide you with happy memories, friendships, the skills, the self-confidence and the hope needed for the journey along that road.