    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [December 1, 1995]
    [Pages 1824-1826]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Parliament of Ireland in Dublin
    December 1, 1995

        Mr. Speaker Comhaile, you appear to be someone who can be trusted
    with the budget. [Laughter] Such are the vagaries of faith which
    confront us all. [Laughter]
        To the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, members of the Dail and the Seanad,
    head of the Senate. I'm honored to be joined here, as all of you know,
    by my wife, members of our Cabinet, and Members of the United States
    Congress of both parties, the congressional delegation chaired by
    Congressman Walsh; they are up there. They got an enormous laugh out of
    the comments of the Comhaile. [Laughter] For different reasons they were
    laughing. [Laughter]
        I thank you for the honor of inviting me here, and I am especially
    pleased to be here at this moment in your history, before the elected
    representatives of a strong, confident, democratic Ireland, a nation
    today playing a greater role in world affairs than ever before.
        We live in a time of immense hope and immense possibility, a time
    captured, I believe, in the wonderful lines of your poet Seamus Heaney
    when he talked of the ``longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and
    hope and history rhyme.'' That is the time in which we live. It's the
    world's good fortune that Ireland has become a force for fulfilling that
    hope and re-

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    deeming the possibilities of mankind, a force for good far beyond your
    numbers. And we are all the better for it.
        Today I have traveled from the north, where I have seen the
    difference Ireland's leadership has made for peace there. At the
    lighting of Belfast's Christmas tree for tens of thousands of people
    there, in the faces of two communities divided by bitter history, we saw
    the radiance of optimism born, especially among the young of both
    communities. In the voices of the Shankill and the Falls, there was a
    harmony of new hope which we saw. I saw that the people want peace, and
    they will have it.
        George Bernard Shaw, with his wonderful Irish love of irony, said,
    ``Peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous.'' Well
    today I thank Prime Minister Bruton and former Prime Minister Reynolds
    and Deputy Prime Minister Spring and Britain's Prime Minister Major and
    others, but especially these, for their unfailing dedication to the
    arduous task of peace.
        From the Downing Street declaration to the historic cease-fire that
    began 15 months ago to Tuesday's announcement of the twin-track
    initiative which will open a dialog in which all voices can be heard and
    all viewpoints can be represented, they have taken great risks without
    hesitation. They've chosen a harder road than the comfortable path of
    pleasant, present pieties. But what they have done is right. And the
    children and grandchildren of this generation of Irish will reap the
    rewards.
        Today I renew America's pledge. Your road is our road. We want to
    walk it together. We will continue our support, political, financial,
    and moral, to those who take risks for peace. I am proud that our
    administration was the first to support in the executive budget sent to
    the Congress the International Fund for Ireland, because we believe that
    those on both sides of the border who have been denied so much for so
    long should see that their risks are rewarded with the tangible benefits
    of peace. In another context a long time ago, Mr. Yeats reminded us that
    too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. We must not let the
    hearts of the young people who yearn for peace turn to stone.
        I want to thank you here, not only for the support you have given
    your leaders in working for peace in Northern Ireland but for the
    extraordinary work you have done to wage peace over war all around the
    world. Almost 1,500 years ago, Ireland stood as a lone beacon of
    civilization to a continent shrouded in darkness. It has been said,
    probably without overstatement, that the Irish, in that dark period,
    saved civilization. Certainly you saved the records of our civilization,
    our shared ideas, our shared ideals, our priceless recordings of them.
        Now, in our time, when so many nations seek to overcome conflict and
    barbarism, the light still shines out of Ireland. Since 1958, almost 40
    years now, there has never been a single, solitary day that Irish troops
    did not stand watch for peace on a distant shore. In Lebanon, in Cyprus,
    in Somalia, in so many other places, more than 41,000 Irish military and
    police personnel have served over the years as peacekeepers, an immense
    contribution for a nation whose armed forces today number fewer than
    13,000.
        I know that during your Presidency of the European Union next year,
    Ireland will help to lead the effort to build security for a stable,
    strong, and free Europe. For all you have done and for your steadfast
    devotion to peace, I salute the people of Ireland.
        Our Nation also has a vital stake in a Europe that is stable,
    strong, and free, something which is now in reach for the first time
    since nation-states appeared on the Continent of Europe so many
    centuries ago. But we know such a Europe can never be built as long as
    conflict tears at the heart of the Continent in Bosnia. The fire there
    threatens the emerging democracies of the region and our allies nearby.
    And it also breaks our heart and violates our conscience.
        That is why, now that the parties have committed themselves to
    peace, we in the United States are determined to help them find the way
    back from savagery to civility, to end the atrocities and heal the
    wounds of that terrible war. That is why we are preparing our forces to
    participate there, not in fighting a war but in securing a peace rooted
    in the agreement they have freely made.
        Standing here, thinking about the devastation in Bosnia, the long
    columns of hopeless refugees streaming from their homes, it is
    impossible not to recall the ravages that were visited on your wonderful
    country 150 years ago, not by war, of course, but by natural disaster
    when the crops rotted black in the ground. Today, still, the Great
    Famine is seared in the memory of the Irish nation and all caring
    peoples. The memory

    [[Page 1826]]

    of a million dead, nearly 2 million more forced into exile, these
    memories will remain forever vivid to all of us whose heritage is rooted
    here.
        But as an American, I must say, as I did just a few moments ago in
    Dublin downtown, that in that tragedy came the supreme gift of the Irish
    to the United States. The men, women, and children who braved the coffin
    ships when Galway and Mayo emptied, when Kerry and Cork took flight,
    brought a life and a spirit that has enormously enriched the life of our
    country.
        The regimental banner brought by President Kennedy that hangs in
    this house reminds us of the nearly 200,000 Irishmen who took up arms in
    our Civil War. Many of them barely were off the ships when they joined
    the Union forces. They fought and died at Fredericksburg and
    Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Theirs was only the first of countless
    contributions to our Nation from those who fled the famine. But that
    contribution enabled us to remain a nation and to be here with you today
    in partnership for peace for your nation and for the peoples who live on
    this island.
        The Irish have been building America ever since, our cities, our
    industry, our culture, our public life. I am proud that the delegation
    that has accompanied me here today includes the latest generation of
    Irish-American leaders in the United States, men and women who remain
    devoted to increasing our strength and safeguarding our liberty.
        In the last century, it was often said that the Irish who fled the
    great hunger were searching for casleain na n-or, castles of gold. I
    cannot say that they found those castles of gold in the United States,
    but I can tell you this: They built a lot of castles of gold for the
    United States in the prosperity and freedom of our Nation. We are
    grateful for what they did and for the deep ties to Ireland that they
    gave us in their sons and daughters.
        Now we seek to repay that in some small way, by being a partner with
    you for peace. We seek somehow to communicate to every single person who
    lives here that we want for all of your children the right to grow up in
    an Ireland where this entire island gives every man and woman the right
    to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities and gives people
    the right to live in equality and freedom and dignity.
        That is the tide of history. We must make sure that the tide runs
    strong here, for no people deserve the brightest future more than the
    Irish.
        God bless you, and thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:30 p.m. in the Dail Chamber at Leinster
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Chairman of the House of Deputies
    Sean Tracey.