[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
[December 1, 1995]
[Pages 1822-1824]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Dublin
December 1, 1995

    Thank you very much. First, let me say to all of you Dubliners and 
to all Ireland, Hillary and I have loved our trip to your wonderful 
country. To the Taoiseach and Mrs. Bruton; Lord Mayor Loftus and Lady 
Mayoress; City Manager Frank Feely; to all the aldermen who conferred 
this great honor on me. To the Americans in the audience, welcome to all 
of you. Are there any Irish in the audience? [Laughter] I want to say 
also how pleased I am to be here with a number of Irish-American Members 
of the United States Congress and the Irish-American Director of the 
Peace Corps, Mark Gearan; the Irish-American Secretary of Education, 
Richard Riley; and the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, who wishes 
today he were Irish-American. Thank you all for being here.
    I was on this College Green once before. Yes, in 1968, when I was 
almost as young as some of the young students over there. Lord Mayor, I 
never dreamed I would be back here on this College Green in this 
capacity, but I am delighted to be here. And I thank you.
    I am told that in earlier times the honor I have just received, 
being awarded the Freedom of the City, meant you no longer had to pay 
tolls to the Vikings. I'm going to try that on the Internal Revenue 
Service when I get home. I hope it will work. [Laughter] Whether it does 
or not, I am proud to say that I am now a free man of Dublin.
    To look out into this wonderful sea of Irish faces on this beautiful 
Irish day I feel like a real ``Dub'' today--is that what I'm supposed to 
say? [Applause] Not only that, I know we have a handy football team. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say that, as a lot of you know, because of events developing 
in Bosnia and the prospect of peace there, I had to cut short my trip. 
But there are a few signs out there I want to respond to. I will return 
to Ballybunion for my golf game. [Laughter]
    I am also pleased to announce that President Robinson has accepted 
my invitation to come to the United States next June to continue our 
friendship.
    There's another special Irish-American I want to mention today and 
that is our distinguished Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, who 
came here with her brother President Kennedy 32 years ago and who has 
worked very hard also for the cause of peace in Northern Ireland.
    Years ago, Americans learned about Dublin from the stories of James 
Joyce and Sean O'Casey. Today, America and the world still learn about 
Dublin and Ireland through the words of Sebastian Barry, Paula Meehan, 
Roddy Doyle; through the films of Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan; through the 
voices of Mary Black and Delores Keane; and yes, through the Cranberries 
and U2. I hear all about how the world's global culture is becoming more 
American, but

[[Page 1823]]

I believe that if you want to grasp the global culture, you need to come 
to Ireland.
    All of you know that I have family ties here. My mother was a 
Cassidy, and how I wish she were alive to be here with me today. She 
would have loved the small towns and she would have loved Dublin. Most 
of all, she would have loved the fact that in Ireland, you have nearly 
300 racing days a year. [Laughter] She loved the horses. I understand 
that there are some Cassidys out in the audience today. And if they are, 
I want to say in my best Arkansas accent, cead mile failte--beatha saol 
agus slainte.
    One hundred and fifty years ago, the crops of this gorgeous island 
turned black in the ground and one-fourth of your people either starved 
from the hunger or were lost to emigration. That famine was the greatest 
tragedy in Irish history. But out of that horrible curse came the most 
bittersweet of blessings, the arrival in my country of millions of new 
Americans who built the United States and climbed to the top of its best 
works. For every person here in Ireland today, 12 more in the United 
States have proud roots in Irish soil.
    Perhaps the memory of the famine explains in part the extraordinary 
generosity of the Irish people, not just to needy neighbors in the local 
parish but to strangers all around the globe. You do not forget those 
who still go hungry in the world today, who yearn simply to put food on 
the table and clothes on their backs. In places as far away as the Holy 
Land, Asia, and Africa, the Irish are helping people to build a future 
of hope.
    Your sons and daughters in the Gardai and the defense forces take 
part in some of the most demanding missions of good will, keeping the 
peace, helping people in war-torn lands turn from conflict to 
cooperation. Whenever the troubled places of the Earth call out for 
help, from Haiti to Lebanon, the Irish are always among the very first 
to answer the call.
    Your commitment to peace helps conquer foes that threaten us all. 
And on behalf of the people of the United States, I say to the people of 
Ireland: We thank you for that from the bottom of our hearts.
    Ireland is helping beat back the forces of hatred and destruction 
all around the world, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, 
terrorism, ethnic hatreds, religious fanaticism, the international drug 
trade. Ireland is helping to beat back these forces that wage war 
against all humanity. You are an inspiration to people around the world. 
You have made peace heroic. Nowhere are the people of Ireland more 
important in the cause of peace today than right here at home.
    Tuesday night, before I left the United States to come here, I 
received the happy word that the Taoiseach and Prime Minister Major had 
opened a gateway to a just and lasting peace, a peace that will lift the 
lives of your neighbors in Northern Ireland and their neighbors in the 
towns and counties that share the northern border. That was the greatest 
welcome anyone could have asked for. I applaud the Taoiseach for his 
courage, but I know that the courage and the heart of the Irish people 
made it possible. And I thank you for what you did.
    Waging peace is risky. It takes courage and strength that is a hard 
road. It is easier, as I said yesterday, to stay with the old grudges 
and the old habits. But the right thing to do is to reach for a new 
future of peace, not because peace is a document on paper or even a 
handshake among leaders but because it changes people's lives in 
fundamental and good ways.
    Yesterday in Northern Ireland I saw that for myself. I saw it on the 
floor of the Mackie plant in Belfast, with Catholics and Protestants 
working side by side to build a better future for their families. I 
heard it in the voices of the two extraordinary children you may have 
seen on your television, one a Catholic girl, the other a Protestant 
boy, who introduced me to the people of Belfast with their hands joined, 
telling the world of their hopes for the future, a future without 
bullets or bombs, in which the only barriers they face are the limits to 
their dreams.
    As I look out on this sea of people today, I tell you that the thing 
that moved me most in that extraordinary day in Northern Ireland 
yesterday was that the young people, Catholic and Protestant alike, made 
it clear to me, not only with their words but by the expressions on 
their faces, that they want peace and decency among all people.
    I know well that the immigration from your country to the shores of 
mine helped to make America great. But I want more than anything for the 
young people of Ireland, wherever they live on this island, to be able 
to grow up and live out their dreams close to their roots in peace and 
honor and freedom and equality.

[[Page 1824]]

    I could not say it better than your Nobel Prize winning poet, Seamus 
Heaney, has said: We are living in a moment when hope and history rhyme. 
In Dublin, if there is peace in Northern Ireland, it is your victory, 
too. And I ask all of you to think about the next steps we must take.
    Stand with the Taoiseach as he takes risks for peace. Realize how 
difficult it is for them, having been in their patterns of opposition 
for so long to the north of you. And realize that those of you who have 
more emotional and physical space must reach out and help them to take 
those next hard steps. It is worth doing.
    And to you, this vast, wonderful throng of people here, and all of 
the people of Ireland, I say: America will be with you as you walk the 
road of peace. We know from our own experience that making peace among 
people of different cultures is the work of a lifetime. It is a constant 
challenge to find strength amid diversity, to learn to respect 
differences instead of run from them. Every one of us must fight the 
struggle within our own spirit. We have to decide whether we will define 
our lives primarily based on who we are or who we are not, based on what 
we are for or what we are against. There are always things to be against 
in life, and we have to stand against the bad things we should stand 
against.
    But the most important thing is that we have more in common with 
people who appear on the surface to be different from us than most of us 
know. And we have more to gain by reaching out in the spirit of 
brotherhood and sisterhood to those people than we can possibly know. 
That is the challenge the young people of this generation face.
    When President Kennedy came here a generation ago and spoke in this 
city he said that he sincerely believed, and I quote, ``that your future 
is as promising as your past is proud, that your destiny lies not as a 
peaceful island in a sea of troubles but as a maker and shaper of world 
peace.''
    A generation later, Ireland has claimed that destiny. Yours is a 
more peaceful land in a world that is ever more peaceful in significant 
measure because of the efforts of the citizens of Ireland. For touching 
the hearts and minds of peace-loving people in every corner of the 
world, for the risk you must now continue to take for peace, for 
inspiring the nations of the world by your example, and for giving so 
much to make America great, America says, thank you.
    Thank you, Ireland, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. outside the Bank of Ireland at 
College Green. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister John Bruton 
and his wife, Fionnuala; and Lord Mayor Sean D. Loftus of Dublin and his 
wife, Patricia.