[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 161 (Monday, December 15, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12717-S12718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE OF IRELAND

 Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, on November 11, Mary McAleese was 
inaugurated as President of Ireland.
  President McAleese was elected by the largest majority ever in an 
Irish Presidential election, and she is also the first President of 
Ireland who is from Northern Ireland.
  Having suffered personally from the troubles in Northern Ireland, 
President McAleese said in her inaugural address that the theme of her 
Presidency would be building bridges--between nationalists and 
unionists in Northern Ireland, and between the North and the South of 
Ireland.
  President McAleese will find many friends in the United States who 
share her vision of cooperation. We look forward to working with her in 
the years to come. I believe that all Members of the Congress concerned 
about these issues will be interested in reading her eloquent inaugural 
address, and I ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The address follows:

Inauguration Speech By President Mary McAleese Dublin Castle, November 
                      11th, 1997, Dublin, Ireland

       This is a historic day in my life, in the life of my family 
     and in the life of the country. It is a wonderful privilege 
     for me to be chosen as Uachtaran na hEireann, to be a voice 
     for Ireland at home and abroad.
       I am honoured and humbled to be successor to seven 
     exemplary Presidents. Their differing religious, political, 
     geographical and social origins speak loudly of a Presidency 
     which has always been wide open and all embracing. Among them 
     were Presidents from Connaught, Leinster and Munster to say 
     nothing of America and London. It is my special privilege and 
     delight to be the first President from Ulster.

[[Page S12718]]

       The span of almost sixty years since the first Presidential 
     inauguration has seen a nation transformed. This Ireland 
     which stands so confidently on the brink of the 21st century 
     and the third millennium is one our forbears dreamed of and 
     yeamed for, a prospering Ireland, accomplished, educated, 
     dynamic, innovative, compassionate, proud of its people, its 
     language, and of its vast heritage; an Ireland, at the heart 
     of the European Union, respected by nations and cultures 
     across the world.
       The scale of what we have already accomplished in such a 
     short time allows us to embrace the future with well-based 
     confidence and hope.
       It is the people of Ireland who, in a million big and small 
     ways, in quiet acts of hard work, heroism and generosity have 
     built up the fabric of home, community and country on which 
     the remarkable success story of today's Ireland is built.
       Over many generations there have been very special sources 
     of inspiration who have nurtured our talent and instilled 
     determination into this country. Mnay outstanding 
     politicians, public servants, voluntary workers, clergy of 
     all denominations and religious, teachers and particularly 
     parents have through hard and difficult times worked and 
     sacrificed so that our children could blossom to their 
     fullest potential.
       They are entitled to look with satisfaction at what they 
     have achieved. May we never become so cynical that we forget 
     to be grateful. I certainly owe them a deep personal debt and 
     as President I hope to find many opportunities both to repay 
     that debt and to assist in the great work of encouraging our 
     children to believe in themselves and in their country.
       Among those who are also owed an enormous debt of thanks 
     are the countless emigrants whose letters home with dollars 
     and pound notes, earned in grinding loneliness thousands of 
     miles from home, bridged the gap between the Ireland they 
     left and the Ireland which greets them today when they return 
     as tourists or return to stay. They are a crucial part of our 
     global Irish family. In every continent they have put their 
     ingenuity and hard work at the service of new homelands. They 
     have kept their love of Ireland, its traditions and its 
     culture deep in their hearts so that wherever we travel in 
     the world there is always a part of Ireland of which we 
     can be proud and which in turn takes pride in us. I hope 
     over the next seven years there will be many opportunities 
     for me to celebrate with them.
       At our core we are a sharing people. Selfishness has never 
     been our creed. Commitment to the welfare of each other has 
     fired generations of voluntary organisations and a network of 
     everyday neighbourliness which weaves together the caring 
     fabric of our country. It has sent our missionaries, 
     development workers and peacekeepers to the aid of distressed 
     peoples in other parts of the world. It has made us a country 
     of refuge for the hurt and dispossessed of other troubled 
     places. It is the fuel which drives us to tackle the many 
     social problems we face, problems which cynicism and self 
     doubt can never redress but painstaking commitment can. We 
     know our duty is to spread the benefits of our prosperity to 
     those whose lives are still mired in poverty, unemployment, 
     worry and despair. There can be no rest until the harsh gap 
     between the comfortable and the struggling has been bridged.
       The late Cearbhall O Dalaigh, Ireland's fifth president 
     and, dare I say it, one of three lawyers to grace the office, 
     said at his inauguration in 1974:
       ``Presidents, under the Irish Constitution don't have 
     policies. But * * * a President can have a theme.''
       The theme of my Presidency, the Eighth Presidency, is 
     Building Bridges. These bridges require no engineering skills 
     but they will demand patience, imagination and courage for 
     Ireland's pace of change is now bewilderingly fast. We grow 
     more complex by the day. Our dancers, singers, writers, 
     poets, musicians, sportsmen and women, indeed our last 
     President herself, are giants on the world stage. Our 
     technologically skilled young people are in demand 
     everywhere. There is an invigorating sense of purpose about 
     us.
       There are those who absorb the rush of newness with 
     delight. There are those who are more cautious, even fearful. 
     Such tensions are part of our creative genius, they form the 
     energy which gives us our unique identity, our particularity.
       I want to point the way to a reconciliation of these many 
     tensions and to see Ireland grow ever more comfortable and at 
     ease with the flowering diversity that is now all around us. 
     To quote a Belfast poet Louis MacNeice ``a single purpose can 
     be founded on a jumble of opposites.''
       Yet I know to speak of reconciliation is to raise a nervous 
     query in the hearts of some North of the border, in the place 
     of my birth. There is no more appropriate place to address 
     that query than here in Dublin Castle, a place where the 
     complex history of these two neighbouring and now very 
     neighbourly islands has seen many chapters written. It is 
     fortuitous too that the timing of today's Inauguration 
     coincides with the commemoration of those who died so 
     tragically and heroically in two world wars. I think of 
     nationalist and unionist, who fought and died together in 
     those wars, the differences which separated them at home, 
     fading into insignificance as the bond of their common 
     humanity forged friendships as intense as love can make them.
       In Ireland, we know only too well the cruelty and 
     capriciousness of violent conflict. Our own history has been 
     hard on lives young and old. Too hard. Hard on those who died 
     and those left behind with only shattered dreams and poignant 
     memories. We hope and pray, indeed we insist, that we have 
     seen the last of violence. We demand the right to solve our 
     problems by dialogue and the noble pursuit of consensus. We 
     hope to see that consensus pursued without the language of 
     hatred and contempt and we wish all those engaged in that 
     endeavour, well.
       That it can be done--we know. We need look no further than 
     our own European continent where once bitter enemies now work 
     conscientiously with each other and for each other as friends 
     and partners. The greatest salute to the memory of all our 
     dead and the living whom they loved, would be the achievement 
     of agreement and peace.
       I think of the late Gordon Wilson who faced his unbearable 
     sorrow ten years ago at the horror that was Enniskillen. His 
     words of love and forgiveness shocked us as if we were 
     hearing them for the very first time, as if they had not been 
     uttered first two thousand years ago. His work, and the work 
     of so many peacemakers who have risen above the awesome pain 
     of loss to find a bridge to the other side, is work I want to 
     help in every way I can. No side has a monopoly on pain. Each 
     has suffered intensely.
       I know the distrusts go deep and the challenge is awesome. 
     Across this island, North, South, East and West, there are 
     people of such greatness of heart that I know with their help 
     it can be done. I invite them, to work in partnership with me 
     to dedicate ourselves to the task of creating a wonderful 
     millennium gift to the Child of Bethlehem whose 2000th 
     birthday we will soon celebrate--the gift of an island where 
     difference is celebrated with joyful curiosity and generous 
     respect and where in the words of John Hewitt ``each may 
     grasp his neighbor's hand as friend.''
       There will be those who are wary of such invitations, 
     afraid that they are being invited to the edge of a 
     precipice. To them I have dedicated a poem, written by the 
     English poet, Christopher Logue, himself a veteran of the 
     Second World War.

     ``Come to the edge.
     We might fall.
     Come to the edge.
     It's too high!
     Come to the edge
     And they came,
     and he pushed
     and they flew.''

       No one will be pushing, just gently inviting, but I hope 
     that if ever and whenever you decide to walk over that edge, 
     there will be no need to fly, you will find there a firm and 
     steady bridge across which we will walk together both ways.
       Ireland sits tantalizingly ready to embrace a golden age of 
     affluence, self-assurance tolerance and peace. It will be my 
     most profound privilege to be President of this beautiful, 
     intriguing country.
       May I ask those of faith, whatever that faith may be, to 
     pray for me and for our country that we will use these seven 
     years well, to create a future where in the words of William 
     Butler Yeats.
       ``Everything we look upon is blest''

                          ____________________