REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO STUDENTS AT OUR LADY AND ST. PATRICK’S COLLEGE, KNOCK
Building Bridges for the 21st Century
I would like to begin, if I might, by saying what a great pleasure it is to be here again in Our Lady’s and St. Patrick’s. It seems only a short time since I was here at your school prize giving but there have been many changes in the years between. One of the things which has not changed is the great work carried out in the school by you, the students, and by your teachers - my old friend Rev. Paddy McKenna, soon also to face a big life upheaval in which we all wish him well, and most especially Mr Dominic Kealey, without whom today's symposium would not be taking place. I was, therefore, especially pleased to be able to accept the kind invitation to come and talk with you today.
I would also like to send a warm greeting to the students and teachers from Lycée Pergand, Besancon who are joining us here today. Their presence is a very welcome sign of the friendship’s we are developing with our EU neighbours. Their support, and indeed the role model provided by the EU as a whole, has been vital in our search for peace and in our endeavour to pursue the goal which is the theme of my talk to you today – building bridges in the 21st Century.
There can be few honours in life greater than being elected President of one's country. It is a truly awe-inspiring and humbling thing – a privilege which brings with it great responsibility. When I was elected as the eighth President of Ireland inevitably, I suppose, I looked back at those who had held the job before me. In doing so I was greatly struck by an observation made by one of my predecessors, the late Cearbhall O'Dálaigh, fifth President of Ireland, who wisely noted that "Presidents under the Irish Constitution don't have policies. But.....a President can have a theme".
Becoming President at a very special time in the history of this island – a time offering the hope of a lasting peace and reconciliation for all of our people; a time of great social and economic change; a time of great challenge as we approach the new millennium - I took as my theme the task of ‘Building Bridges'. In carrying out my work as President throughout the past sixteen months I have tried to keep that theme very much in mind.
Bridges are more than mere pieces of engineering. Whether simple or elaborate, they can link two places that would otherwise be inaccessible to each other. They can carry us safely over difficult terrain. In their construction they draw on both the mental and physical reserves of those who would build them - requiring skill, imagination, patience and judgement.
They can be crossed in both directions - bringing people as well as places together. And perhaps, most significantly, in doing so they need pose no threat to the identity of the places that lie at either end, but offer the hope of transforming utterly the relationship between them. To each is offered a new lifeline, a new source of energy, from which each can draw and grow healthily.
As the first President of Ireland to come from Ulster, I am only too aware of the great number of bridges we need to build together. But I know that as we do so, we have nothing to fear, and a great deal to gain, from reaching out towards each other across the divide. We live in a world where difference is the hallmark of humanity – each person unique – even the most identical of identical twins – a different human person. Strange then that we should have such a history of fear of difference rather than a culture of celebration of difference. We have been steeped in the politics of conflict – now this generation is called to build respect where there was contempt and to craft a new fresh, humanly decent, culture of consensus.
We are now approaching the first anniversary of the Agreement reached in Belfast on Good Friday last year. The Agreement was not only the culmination of the two years of tough negotiations from which it resulted, it was also the bringing to fruition of the work of generations of people who prayed, hoped and toiled so that a lasting peace would come to Ireland.
The Agreement, as its opening words suggest, offers a "truly historic opportunity for a new beginning". For the sake of all of the generations who dreamed of peace, for our own sakes, and for the sake of the generations that will come after us, each of us has a solemn duty to do all that we can to ensure that we seize that opportunity with both hands. While our politicians are working day and night to put flesh to the bones of the
Agreement, each one of us has a vital role to play. The things we do can bring more respect in the world, can encourage others to be more respectful, can provoke change – just as casual words of cynicism or sectarianism can keep the toxin of hatred alive and eating away at our hearts and hopes.
For too long the two great traditions and cultures on this island have viewed each other from afar. Kept apart by separate memories, separate histories and separate hopes, our physical closeness to each other masked an awful reality that we did not and do not truly deeply know each other and, worse than that, we think we know each other very well.
What we know best though is, all that pushed people apart rather than that which could draw them together.
But when the people of Ireland, North and South, endorsed the Agreement last May in such overwhelming numbers we realised the common ‘Yesness’ there was in us, the common determination to change. We turned away from the terrible hurts which we have inflicted on each other in the past and consciously set ourselves a new course, a new future. We committed ourselves to the great project of reconciliation - the only way through which we will create a meaningful, just and lasting peace on this island. We know it is a process – there are many hurts to heal, trusts to build and things to unlearn, but the prize is a people focused on building up a better future for all our children, a place where the casual cruelties of life itself will be enough to cope with, without the man made cruelties which have skewed our history, bringing a trail of wrecked lives in its path.
As the new Millennium approaches, we are committed to work together to create an Ireland not just at ease with its diversity, but celebratory of it. We can become a forward looking people, with the self confidence and humility necessary to cast off our old inhibitions and to reach out to new horizons with boldness and determination.
Those who have said ‘Yes’ now are called to reach out with open hands and open minds - crossing great divides to meet each other and, a spirit of mutual respect, trust and love – casting off the old language of word and body which stored up our pitiful and petty world of enmity.
It will not be easy.
As Prime Minister Blair observed when he made his historic address to the Houses of the Oireachtas last November, we will have to overcome "so much shared history. So much shared pain". But, as he also added, between us we now have "the shared hope of a new beginning".
As we build bridges to each other, we must make that shared hope our foundation.
Young people like yourselves face a great challenge and carry a considerable responsibility, for you have most to gain from a lasting peace. The building of the future is in your hands. When history comes to be written, I hope that it will record that you rose to that challenge. That you will be remembered as the generation that saw a lasting peace come to Ireland. The generation that built bridges across all of the divides between us. The generation that built an Ireland where, in the words of poet John Hewitt "each may grasp his neighbour's hand as friend".
What have we to lose if we fail? The answer is everything from hope, to peace of mind, to life itself. That is what those who died in the Troubles lost, what their families lost, what we as a people lost. Some things we cannot change but we can redeem the past by using today well to build the kind of future which gives us peace, and peace of mind.
I would like to thank you all once again for inviting me here today and I hope that together we can continue that great task of building bridges.