Media Library

Speeches

State Visit by President Göncz of Hungary Address by President Robinson State Dinner - 24 April 1995

State Visit by President Göncz of Hungary Address by President Robinson State Dinner - 24 April 1995

President and Mrs Göncz

Ladies and Gentlemen

It is with very great pleasure that I welcome you, President Göncz, and Mrs Göncz to Ireland.  We are particularly honoured, Mr President, by your visit which is testimony to the substantive and growing links between our two countries.

I recall with great appreciation the warmth and generosity with which you received Mr Robinson and myself in Budapest some eighteen months ago.  Those few days afforded us a brief but indelible memory of your fascinating country, and a wonderful impression of Budapest:  a city proud of its heritage and  confident in its future.

Mr. President,

Although I know this is your first visit, in a real sense, Ireland is a country that you have visited many times:  in translating the works of John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey you have become an experienced traveller in what one might call the Irish country of the mind.  In so doing, you have interpreted for the Hungarian public some of our most defining prose works.  I am pleased that you had the opportunity of visiting Inis Meán and of experiencing there the beauty of the island and the backdrop to some of the greatest works of Synge.

In referring to your literary work, I have mentioned a small but fascinating aspect of a very wide-ranging career that is both impressive and inspiring.  You have been involved in a great many aspects of the life of your country.  You have also been closely and personally connected with Hungary's recent historical evolution. Indeed, the many roles of your career trace the weft and the warp of the life of your country:  you have been variously a lawyer, a pipe-fitter, an agricultural engineer, a prisoner of conscience, a writer and a translator.  Finally, in becoming Hungary's first democratically elected President, you have embodied a decisive turn in your country's history. Indeed, you became Head of State as your country took its first steps back into the mainstream of European life.

We know that the journey to that point was not an easy one.  Irish people of my generation have enduring memories of 1956, that year of shattered hopes, when for a few brief days the people of Hungary made a brave leap for the freedom which was their birthright.  You played your part in that struggle and, as a consequence, spent six years in prison.  Your release in 1963 marked a certain loosening of the bonds which fettered political life in Hungary.  Over the following twenty-five years and through all the means which were left open in Hungary at the time, you pursued the political aspirations of the people you now represent.  We deeply admire your role in the process which culminated in the great turning-point of 1989.  At that point, substance was given to the natural will of your people to shape their destinies through their own freely-chosen representatives. 

Mr President,

Here in Ireland, we followed those recent events with close interest and attention, as did our respective peoples look to each other in earlier generations.

A moment of reflection will bring to mind the similarities in our historical experiences, and the influences we had on one another.

It was in Hungary that certain parallels were first explicitly noted.  This happened in the years before the Great Famine in Ireland, the 150th anniversary of which we are commemorating this year.  At that time, Daniel O'Connell was a dominant figure not only in Irish politics, but also in the vision of peaceful nationalists throughout Europe.  His tireless campaigning within the constitutional framework of his day struck a chord in many countries where the people had been denied a voice, and nowhere more than in Hungary.  Your great statesman, Lajos Kossuth is in many ways a close Hungarian counterpart of O'Connell and there are many parallels in their respective approaches to political action.

At the same time that O'Connell's successes in Ireland were inspiring Hungary's politicians, the sentiments voiced in the poems of Thomas Moore were inspiring Hungarian poets to express their own nationalist aspirations.  We take particular pride in the thought that Moore's work was a major influence on the patriotic verse of your great national poet Mihaly Vörösmarty.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the achievement of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, through which Hungary regained a national parliament and a large measure of its rightful sovereignty, influenced one of the early leaders of the Irish independence movement, Arthur Griffith.  He wrote extensively about the concept, advocating it vigorously as a mechanism by which our own national aspirations could be realised.  The idea marked an  important stage in the evolution of Irish nationalist thinking.  Perhaps reflecting this, a new Irish poetic consciousness was in the same period also looking to your country.  In an early piece, William Butler Yeats spoke of his vision of Ireland as "the Hungary of the West".

We have therefore had, at the level of ideas, a number of interesting encounters.  These are perhaps of a tentative nature, but they are nonetheless significant as they represent, I feel, a certain latent affinity between our countries.  One  possible reason for such an affinity is another shared thread of our national histories, and that is emigration.  Indeed, this is a phenomenon which has profoundly marked the experience of both Ireland and Hungary.  I know that you, like me, believe in the importance of continuing links between the home country and its citizens now living abroad.  Indeed, a country's emigrants are a potent living connection between it and the outside world.  I recall that during my visit to Budapest in 1993 I met a small but very active group of  Irish people living and working in Hungary.  I was impressed how, in their various ways  they are forging stronger links between us.

Happily, that sense of affinity I referred to is now being given more substance in an increasing number of cultural contacts.  Last year saw a very successful Irish participation in the Budapest Spring Festival. The "Dublin Days" segment of the 1994 Festival was an opportunity for the people of Budapest to sample a little of Irish culture, notably the performances by our National Folk Theatre, Siamsa Tire.   For our part, we are looking forward to a taste of Hungarian culture later in the year when Dublin hosts its Hungarian Week.

And there is a further aspect of our relationship which is bound to assume increasing importance in the years ahead.  That is, of course, the European Union, which Hungary has now formally applied to join. For Ireland, membership of the European Community and now of the Union has been one of the most important aspects of our national life since 1973.  We look forward to assuming the responsibility of the presidency of the Union once again during next year.  We can therefore well appreciate both the importance of the Union to you and the challenges which must be met and overcome as you develop your relationship with it.  In your own words, Hungary is "inexorably approaching the European Union", and we wish you well in this process.

The recent decision of the Irish Government to open a resident embassy in Budapest will be seen against this background.  It also reflects the growing economic links between our two countries, both in trade and investment.  With embassies established in each other's capitals, we can look forward to seeing these links further enhanced in the future.

I now invite our guests to join with me in wishing Your Excellency and Mrs Göncz a very happy stay in Ireland.  My toast is to the President and the people of Hungary.