[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 48 (Monday, December 4, 1995)]
[Pages 2084-2086]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Business Leaders in Belfast

November 30, 1995

    The President. Well, first of all, I want to thank all of you, all 
the panelists and Mr. Thompson and your M.P. for the fine things that 
have been said. And I thank you for quoting the King James Version of 
the Bible. I read all the more modern ones, and sometimes they're easier 
to understand, but they're not nearly as eloquent. So King James is 
still my favorite, too.
    I would like to make just three points very briefly. First, in the 
presence of the Members of Congress who are here, I want to thank them 
for funding the International Fund for Ireland. In the United States, it 
was

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really a congressional initiative. For many years, the President--until 
I became President, no President ever even made a recommendation to 
spend the money because it was thought to be unusual. But I can tell 
you, now, even though this connection was never made before, we fund 
programs through the Agency for International Development around the 
world in countries much poorer than Northern Ireland which are 
essentially trying to do the same things.
    We know now that if you really want to grow jobs in places where 
there's not a lot of capital, you have to set up a mechanism for getting 
capital into entrepreneurial people who may be in one- or two- or three- 
or four- or five-person businesses. And if you do it right, you can 
create an enormous, enormous number of successful businesses, and in so 
doing, create the demand for the products and services that will be 
produced.
    So I think what you are doing here is really an extraordinary thing. 
And I want to thank the Members of Congress who have consistently 
supported the International Fund for Ireland who are here and to say 
that I hope, frankly, that you will become, as we move forward down the 
road to peace--and Senator Mitchell and the others who worked so hard on 
the investment conference over on our side of the ocean--and you enjoy 
more success, I hope you will become a model for a lot of other 
countries as well who are struggling to build a system of free 
enterprise and give their energetic people the kinds of opportunities 
that you have found.
    We see it even in our own country--some places that others had given 
up on, thought, you know, where there would never be any economic 
opportunity there again--the most successful thing that has been done 
even in our own country is starting things like the International Fund 
for Ireland. But it works better here, what you are doing through these 
community groups, than almost any other place that I'm aware of in the 
world.
    And you said it yourself, sir. I think you said you have in this 
consortium 200 companies with 900 employees; that's an average number of 
employees somewhere between four and five. But it you look at the cost--
what did you say--13\1/2\ million pounds--I think I can still do 
exchange rates, even though I've been--Presidents are disabled from all 
practical things, you know. [Laughter] They don't get to buy food or 
drive cars or exchange money, but that's pretty low cost per job 
creation. And so I think that's very, very important. And I applaud all 
of you for what you're doing.
    The second point I want to make is that the cease-fire, I'm 
convinced, made possible a lot of this growth. And some of you have said 
that. And you talked about how it's also changing the whole image of 
Northern Ireland. One of the things that I hope will come out of my trip 
here today is that people who have never been here will see the country 
in a different light. You know, we owe that to the media, but people all 
over the world will be seeing this trip tonight. And they will see your 
whole country in a different light. They will see people like you; they 
will see you on television. They will say, those are the kind of people 
I wouldn't mind being involved with. And I think that will help. But 
it's a real argument for continuing the peace.
    And the third thing I would say is that--you might want to ask 
Senator Mitchell to comment on this--is the conference we had, the 
Washington conference, last May. I think it's important to do more 
things like that, not just in the United States but elsewhere, so that 
people are aware, in a tangible way, of the grassroots, not only the 
grassroots commitment to peace but the extraordinary array of 
competence, the abilities, the ideas, that are coming out of here. 
Because I think--and I think as you do that, you'll become more 
integrated into the global economy in a positive way and it will be more 
difficult for anyone to turn the clock back on you.
    George, would you like----

[At this point, George Mitchell, Special Assistant to the President for 
Northern Ireland, made brief remarks.]

    The President. Let me just say, I want to leave on a little bit 
lighter note. When I read my notes about what all of you do, and I was 
preparing for this and I knew I was bringing all the--the Ambassador for 
the United States to Great Britain and the British Ambassador to 
America, and all these other people, and especially all the politicians 
back there, and I saw that Lynn McGregor is the

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owner of a company called Altered Images, and I thought to myself, she 
could become an overnight millionaire in Washington, DC--[laughter]--
just by putting up an office. [Laughter] We all need to alter our image 
a little there.
    Thank you very much. Congratulations to all of you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:54 p.m. at the East Belfast Enterprise 
Park. In his remarks, he referred to Peter Thompson, board chairman, 
East Belfast Enterprise Park.