ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE IRELAND FUND OF GREAT BRITAIN MIDSUMMER BALL, LONDON
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE TO THE IRELAND FUND OF GREAT BRITAIN MIDSUMMER BALL, LONDON FRIDAY, 15 JUNE, 2007
Thank you very much for your warm welcome this evening and my special thanks to Peter Sutherland for the invitation to be here and to have this chance to say thank you to each of you and to the Ireland Fund of Great Britain, for the role you have played in the historic reconciliation between these two neighbouring islands and within the island of Ireland. I thank you also for your generosity and fidelity to the Forgotten Irish Campaign. In the euphoria generated by these exceptional circumstances where the historic and unique confluence of peace, prosperity and partnership augurs well for the future, there has to be space to remember the forgotten, to let them know they are remembered and to help their lives feel the joy of knowing they are cared for. I particularly thank Peter Kiernan and John Rowan for their hard work and their passionate highlighting of this important cause and ambitious project.
For the Irish in Britain the backdrop has changed very dramatically. The bad old days of endemic outward migration from Ireland have ended. The once fraught relationship between Ireland and Great Britain has metamorphosed in this generation into a firm and warm friendship so eloquently described by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in his address to the joint houses of Parliament in Westminster last month. Out of that friendship there came a common focus on building peace in Northern Ireland which in recent weeks has helped deliver the most stunning and hope-filled results. After so much waste and suffering we have had a feast of iconic days and it is no exaggeration to say that a new era has dawned. The DUP and Sinn Fein together now head up a new devolved government, clear evidence that relationships within Northern Ireland are on the road to normalisation. Ian Paisley and An Taoiseach stood together at the site of the battle of the Boyne, evidence of hugely improved cross-border relationships. In Flanders at the memorial to the Irish of the 16th Irish and the 36th Ulster Divisions who fell there ninety years ago this month I stood beside Minister Edwin Poots, a DUP member of the new Northern Ireland Executive, evidence of the successful retrieval of once neglected, shared memories. Those who wondered if this shift of mood was shared by the wider public got their answer in Croke Park in February of this year when the English rugby team got an Irish welcome like no other, which I hope even for them helped transcend the outcome which was also like no other. The evidence is in that there is a sea-change in attitudes, a sea-change in relationships and we are the first generation to inherit the fair wind these changes have generated - a generation comfortable with twin or triple identities, Irish, British, European, proud of mixed identities and comfortable with single identities living side by side as good neighbours, friends and partners.
The landscape around us has been cleared of much of the historical debris. New plants are taking root. The Irish who emigrated here over many decades have powered their way in successive generations into every sphere of British life. They are successful, accomplished, confident and we in Ireland are very proud of their manifold contributions. Today Ireland has become a country of net inward migration for the first time in a century and a half and now over 100,000 British citizens live in Ireland. These human ties interlace our lives and our countries, for like the Irish in Britain they are making a huge contribution to Ireland’s new story as one of the world’s most fascinating and high-achieving global economies. Their children like the children of the emigrant Irish will make both Ireland and Britain proud for in a real sense both can claim to be their heritage and their homelands. They are helping to ensure that out of Ireland’s own emigrant experience we are building a comfortably multicultural country with a genuine welcome to immigrants from the European Union and far beyond.
But we remember our indebtedness to our own emigrants, to those who sent home hard-earned pounds from post offices in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and all the rest. For many Irish families, those days are still firmly within living memory and we know that those faithful remittances helped us survive the hard times. That is why the fate of the forgotten Irish is so important to us and why the Irish Government, in recognition of the pivotal role played by so many emigrants over the years, has, over the past five years, placed the highest priority on addressing the needs of those vulnerable and marginalised Irish emigrants throughout the world, but most particularly in Britain where it provides substantial funding to over 140 emigrant services and organisation. The impact of that help can best be seen in the reduction of Irish homeless in London which has fallen from 600 in 1999 to less than 100 in 2006, figures which come from the Simon Community which attributes this welcome decrease to the Irish government’s support of their work.
That support creates a formidable partnership between the voluntary and state sectors and it is of course the work of the volunteers that makes the connections, sees the needs, constructs the response, raises the money and is the face of care. The Ireland Fund has become a very important element in that partnership just as it has been a crucial element in shifting Northern Ireland away from a culture of conflict to a culture of consensus and in helping to repair the relationships that were skewed and twisted by history. Your work has always been focussed on individuals and on community. You have been a lifeline helping to safely draw people to a healthier and a happier landscape. Now your work with the elderly and vulnerable Irish, so easily overlooked and so in need of effective help, will join the already proud legacy of inspirational projects and tangible results which the Ireland Fund of Great Britain has championed and produced.
The Ulster Poet John Hewitt put it well - “We build to fill the centuries’ arrears.”. Thank you for helping in that work and thank you for giving so many a future worth waking up to and worth looking forward to.
Thank you.