Speech at an Official Dinner in honour of H.E. Dr. Heinz Fischer, President of Austria
Áras an Uachtaráin, 6th October 2014
A Shoilse, Excellency Heinz Fischer, President of Austria
Mrs Fischer,
Tánaiste,
Ministers,
Distinguished guests,
Is cúis mhór áthais dom é fáilte a fhearadh romhaibh go hÉireann a Shoilse Heinz Fischer, a Bhean Uasal Margit Fischer agus a thoscaireacht uile na hOstaire.
[It is with great pleasure that I welcome you, Your Excellency Heinz Fischer, Mrs. Margit Fischer, and the entire Austrian delegation, to Ireland].
I know, Mr. President, that you visited our island previously, in a different capacity, so you may recall our traditional greeting, céad míle fáilte – one hundred thousand welcomes.
I am delighted to have this occasion to celebrate the friendship that unites our two peoples – a friendship which your visit acknowledges and deepens; and a friendship which the visit to Austria by my predecessor, former President Mary McAleese, in 2006, also helped build.
Our two countries are linked by ancient trails and paths of migration, those innumerable human journeys that run as many threads through the rich tapestry of our shared European history. Throughout the Middle Ages, animated by a powerful spiritual impulse, the Irish pilgrim monks and scholars, travelled extensively the European continent, where they founded numerous places of worship and scholarship: Saint Columbanus and Saint Gall in Bregenz; Virgil von Salzburg, who was born Fergal in Ireland; or the Schottenshift monastery, well-known to the Viennese, are but a few names that bring home to us the old connections between Ireland and Austria.
With the collapse of the Gaelic order that followed military defeat and conquest at home, and sometimes as conditions of surrender, many Irish men and women sought refuge in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. Some of these “Wild Geese”, as they came to be known, and their descendants, went on to find fame and fortune in the administration and military of the Austrian Empire.
Many centuries later, during the darkest of times in Europe’s history, Ireland provided a shelter to a number of Austrians fleeing the Nazi regime. The best known of these Austrian exiles in Ireland is, perhaps, Erwin Schrödinger who served as Director of the School for Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His series of 1943 lectures entitled ‘What is Life?’ – encouraged and then attended by the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera – was a high point in the intellectual life of this country. It is intriguing to speculate on whether Schrödinger’s path ever crossed with that of Ludwig Wittgenstein who also lived in Dublin in the late 1940s. Wittgenstein is known to have frequented the Phoenix Park, where we are this evening, and he had elected the steps of the Botanic Gardens’ Palm House as his favourite spot for writing.
This multi-secular history of migrations, this rich European tradition of scholarship forged through exchanges of ideas and an abundance of intellectual encounters, provide the canvass from which we, nowadays, must continue to sketch our shared hopes and vision for the future of Europe.
The great challenges facing us as Europeans require an intellectual response that is grounded in ethical reasoning and has social cohesion at its heart. How, we might ask, are we to undertake further necessary institutional integration if we do not commit to a social integration that is founded on inclusive democratic principles.
I trust that both yourself, Mr. President, and Mrs. Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, as Federal Minister for Education, will share my conviction that our universities have a crucial role to play in crafting that intellectual response. European universities are places where a truly pluralistic scholarship must exist and be nurtured, where our younger citizens are enabled to acquire the tools and skills they need to build and imagine their future in a transformative way – enabled, also, to learn the history and languages of their fellow Europeans.
May I say how delighted I was to learn of the renewal of the Irish Studies Agreement with the University of Vienna. The fact that there are enthusiastic students of Gaeilge in Austria is but one among so many cross-cultural learning experiences across the Union that form the solid base of our European identity in the making.
Mr President, Mrs Fischer,
Your visit comes at a critical juncture for our two countries, and for Europe as a whole. The economic crisis resulting from the global financial meltdown of 2008 has exacted a huge toll on both our peoples. Inequalities have grown throughout Europe and new forms of alienation have developed, notably high levels of unemployment – an alienation that, if not arrested, bodes dangers to social cohesion.
In Ireland, as a consequence of the blanket guarantee extended to the main Irish banks’ assets and liabilities, Ireland’s general Government debt increased from 25% of GDP in 2007 to 124% in 2013. Public expenditures have been cut, and unemployment has soared, affecting particularly the young, and leaving so many with little choice but to emigrate.
I am pleased to say that, thanks to the efforts of all of our citizens, things are beginning to get better: unemployment fell to 11.1% last month; our exports levels continue to increase. I know, Mr. President, that you will speak tomorrow at an Irish-Austrian Business Forum. Trade links between Austria and Ireland are strong, amounting to over 1.3 billion euro, and such thriving commercial links form a sound basis upon which to build our common future prosperity.
We must also, however, learn the lessons from the recent financial upheavals, which have thrown a glaring light on the shortcomings of the assumed sustainability of self-regulating markets. We must challenge the models that have inflicted such deep injuries on our moral and political imaginations – injuries that seem at times to have blunted our critical capacity and colonised our scholarly work in the social sciences, in particular economic theory, in such a way as to make critical discourse unwelcome and difficult.
We must, above all, ensure that the fight against unemployment is effectively at the core of our joint European agenda for the years to come. Indeed the test of authenticity for our European democracy lies in its ability to let the poor and the unemployed of Europe speak, lest we risk drifting towards Max Weber’s nightmare of an icy winter of technocratic rationality.
Mr President,
1994 saw the first visit of an Austrian President to Ireland, shortly before Austria joined the European Union. Over the two decades that have elapsed since, the EU has grown to include 28 Member States, and Austria now finds itself at the geographical centre of the Union.
We should never forget, however, that the 1990s also witnessed the bloody disintegration of the Yugoslav federation. The fate of our neighbours in the Western Balkan region is a vital concern, one that conjures up the fundamentals of the European promise. Thus all of us in Europe are most grateful to Austria for its consistent support of the accession prospects of those South Eastern countries which still remain outside of the EU.
Indeed European solidarity cannot be confined to the boundaries of the Union. The ongoing hostilities that tear our Eastern neighbourhood, the tragic conflicts that are affecting millions of civilians in Africa and the Middle East, the rise of bogus fundamentalism and inhuman extremism, are an inescapable and compelling call on us to rethink our global responsibilities and meaningfully reach out to the wider world.
In our work together, Ireland and Austria share what is, I believe, an indispensable commitment to multilateralism. Both our countries joined the United Nations on the same day in 1955 and both have served together on UN peace-keeping missions. We also have productively worked together on issues relating to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and Ireland looks forward to participating in the conference hosted by Austria this December to examine the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.
Mr. President, I have no doubt that Ireland and Austria will continue to work closely together in addressing the many challenges that lie ahead of us. Cooperation and friendship deepen to the extent that they are sustained by regular contact. Your visit here this week is an important occasion in reinvigorating the many ties that bind us together.
May I then invite you, distinguished guests, to stand and join me in a toast:
To the peoples of Ireland and the Republic of Austria;
To the good health of the President of the Republic of Austria,
Dr. Heinz Fischer;
And to the good health of all those present.
Sláinte mhaith, Zum Wohl!