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REMARKS PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE BOSTON COLLEGE HIGHER EDUCATION CONFERENCE

REMARKS PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE BOSTON COLLEGE HIGHER EDUCATION CONFERENCE DINNER ON FIRDAY 19 JUNE 1998

I know that you have had a particularly busy conference over the last two days – considering many of the important questions that confront educators at this time – both in the United States and in Ireland – where the international dimension of education impacts on the delivery and style of university services – and on the administrative structures within the higher education sector. Now that these deliberations have been brought to a close, I hope that you have found the papers, insights, ideas and discussions imaginative and challenging – and that through the sharing process you will go back to your respective jobs and disciplines – with a fresh sense of vocation, full of renewed enthusiasm and new ideas.

- I am delighted to have been invited to join you for dinner – and to have this opportunity to give recognition to you for what you have done to foster and maintain your links with Ireland. Those links have been and will be to the benefit of many Irish students who want to play an active and constructive part in the new dynamic Ireland that we have today – an Ireland that is vastly different to the place from where so many people from previous generations left out of pure economic necessity – to provide a livelihood for themselves and their families – that, sadly, was not available to them at home.

- The Massachusetts area is of course a part of the United States where many Irish people settled and built communities – and from where so many were to go on to great things in America’s public, academic and commercial life. It is impossible to think of Boston without thinking of the Kennedys – who gave the United States its most famous 20th President, and a talented Attorney General – both of whom paid with their lives for their deep sense of civic service. Their brother Ted, a distinguished member of the United States Senate has been a critical friend to Ireland - and of course their sister Jean, who is with us here this evening – has had a most successful tenure as US Ambassador to Ireland – playing a crucial role on behalf of the people and Government of the United States at this important time in the history of Ireland. She has been here in dark days and has worked assiduously for these brighter days we are now enjoying. I would like to pay a personal tribute to Jean – and to wish her well when she leaves her Dublin post in the near future. We will miss her but know of course that her deep love of Ireland will simply be expressed in different ways.

- Others – like Tom Flatley – a man who is no stranger to Boston College – have been towers of support to many young Irish people who have gone to Boston over the last several decades. Arriving tentative, lonely and a little homesick – they have been grateful for the strong and enduring familial bonds which have been constructed by generations of Irish to help and sustain one another. They have rewarded that support by going on to major achievements in business and commerce in America – where today we take pride in the litany of Irish names among the galaxy of top names in business, the professions, public life and academia.

- The success story that America is today is today is a story the American Irish family owns a large part of – and that family has never turned its back on its homeland. On the contrary, the bonds go way beyond nostalgia and affection. They are real, they are dynamic and they are making a difference.

- A good example is Boston College which - through the Centre for Irish Management – now the Irish Institute - has made its own significant contribution to Ireland by its efforts to facilitate economic growth and job creation here – through programmes like the Developing Entrepreneurs in Boston for Ireland Programme, which was part funded by the International Fund for Ireland – the Advanced Management and Community Leadership Programmes, part funded by our Department of Enterprise and Employment – the Exchange Programmes, generously funded to the tune of $1 million in the 1997 US Federal Budget. Other programmes like the Ron Brown Business Development Program, the IMI Leadership Program, the Tourism Marketing Program – and a host of other programmes at the Institute – all of which focus on economic and leadership development – are designed for participants from both parts of Ireland – and are making a considerable and valuable contribution to the creation of a prosperous economic environment - in which to build the many new relationships and partnerships that will be required to bring us forward.

- This evening, I want to pay a warm tribute to Fr. William Leahy, the President of Boston College, for the valued and valuable contribution that the college has made to Ireland – a contribution that is yielding very tangible results in the numbers of young people equipped with the leadership skills to carry this island forward. Our economic and cultural renaissance is no accident or coincidence. It is born of shrewd, visionary leadership, sound investment in education, conscientious public service and imaginative educators.

- I also want to give recognition to Dr. Sean Rowland, the Director of the Irish Institute at Boston College for his direction and commitment – and for his vision in bringing the Institute to what it is today. Sean is another of Ireland’s native sons who has “done well” in America – and is generously giving of his time and talent to help others in Ireland to realise their own talents and skills – and to transform this country into a place where we can live together in sustained peace and prosperity in the years and decades ahead.

- It is no exaggeration to say that the next generation of young Irish women and men will inherit the best Ireland yet – peaceful, prosperous and using all its creative genius, all its energy in a partnership focussed on the future. It is an Ireland where the talents and abilities of the coming generations will have no impediment to their energy - with education transforming a country where - as Seamus Heaney describes it in his poem “From the Canton of Expectation”,

“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”.

 

- Seamus talk of an Ireland with a generation having “intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars” - that can, through education, use their creative abilities to their very best – making their full contribution in the their chosen careers.

- This evening’s dinner comes almost on the eve of my first visit to the United States as President of Ireland. During my visit – which will take in Washington and New York – I will be reinforcing the links between Ireland and the United States – links that have meant so much to Ireland in the past – especially in the recent successful efforts to reach agreement for a way forward. We in Ireland owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the American people for their assistance – which will be so vital in the months and years ahead - as we embark on a new direction with a new set of relationships - that will hopefully see us enter a new and peaceful phase in the history of this island. Boston College is one of the many important links between Ireland and the US – and it is one which has served us well. I hope that we can continue to grow that link – and to vindicate your faith in us for the future.