[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1999)]
[Pages 456-457]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Saint Patrick's Day Ceremony With Prime Minister Bertie 
Ahern of Ireland

March 17, 1999

    The President. Thank you very much. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. 
Happy Saint Patrick's Day--and what a beautiful day it is.
    We are following the custom today, which is, first of all, I 
received my shamrocks, for which I am very grateful. And with the year 
ahead I'd say we are very much in need of them, and we'll make good use 
of them. I would like to ask the Taoiseach to come up now and make his 
remarks, as is customary, and then I'd like to say a few words about 
where we are in the peace process.
    Mr. Prime Minister, welcome back to the United States.

[Prime Minister Ahern made remarks on the peace process.]

    The President. Thank you very much, Taoiseach. Thank you for the 
beautiful crystal bowl of shamrocks, its promise of spring, which is 
reflected in the weather we enjoy today, and its symbol of our shared 
heritage, our shared values, and our shared hopes for the future.
    Let me say first a few words of tribute to you for your leadership 
of the Republic and the success you have enjoyed. Last year was Bertie 
Ahern's first Saint Patrick's Day in Washington as Taoiseach. I talked 
then about Frank McCourt growing up in poverty in Limerick, about Van 
Morrison growing up in Belfast and hearing a new world through music, 
about a generation of children growing up in the shadows of The 
Troubles. Together on that day, the Taoiseach and I reaffirmed that the 
parties in Northern Ireland had the chance to find common ground.
    Now, a year later, look at what's happened. First of all, as I told 
the Taoiseach over lunch, Frank McCourt's book, ``Angela's Ashes,'' is 
being made into a movie. But Ireland and Limerick are doing so well 
economically, as I had a chance to see for myself last summer, that the 
producers could not find in all of Limerick enough dilapidated buildings 
to use in the film. And so in order to film in Ireland, they actually 
had to construct new dilapidated buildings. That is true economic 
progress. Meanwhile, Van Morrison's music continues to inspire people 
seeking to end the violence and, of course, most importantly, in the 
last year the negotiators did the job with the Good Friday agreement. 
The people of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic overwhelmingly 
endorsed it, and as the Taoiseach has said, enormous progress has been 
made in its implementation.
    We are grateful for the work of the leaders in Northern Ireland, in 
Ireland, and in Great Britain for their support and their efforts in 
this regard. We are grateful, in particular, for the Taoiseach, for 
Prime Minister Blair, for Mo Mowlam, and all those who have taken an 
especially leading role. We are grateful for the Nobel Prize winners, 
John Hume and David Trimble, and all the other leaders of the various 
factions in Northern Ireland.
    But as Bertie said, the enemies of peace are still rearing their 
head. We saw it in Omagh. We saw it on Monday with the murder of 
Rosemary Nelson. We saw it with another act of violence yesterday.
    Now, in a few short weeks, the time will come to bring the new 
institutions to life so that the people of Northern Ireland finally can 
begin to take their destinies into their own hands.
    To fully implement the Good Friday accord, the parties simply must 
resolve their differences, and to do it, they have to have the same 
spirit of cooperation and trust that led to the first agreement. They 
must lift their sights above the short-term difficulties. They must see 
that distant horizon when children will grow up in an Ireland trouble-
free, and not even remember how it used to be.
    You know, on Saint Patrick's Day, we all rejoice in being Irish; 
even people that aren't Irish in America claim to be Irish. I told the 
Taoiseach at the Speaker's lunch--we just

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came from that--I said, ``You know, every time we have these Saint 
Patrick's Day events, the Prime Minister of Ireland and all of the 
leaders of all the factions in Northern Ireland, they come here to the 
United States and they thank us for helping to promote the peace in 
Ireland. But the truth is, we should be thanking them because it's the 
only time we can be absolutely sure there will be peace between 
Republicans and Democrats in the United States. When they come here, all 
the Irish Republicans and the Irish Democrats in the United States and 
all the people who claim to be Irish on Saint Patrick's Day actually 
behave in a very civil and cooperative way toward one another.''
    I think it's worth remembering that when Saint Patrick came from 
England to Christianize Ireland, he did it without a sword, without the 
order of law. It was the only time in all history that a whole nation 
had converted without any force or bloodshed. He did it by carefully 
listening to the Irish people, understanding what they needed to do, how 
they could change, how they could not, and treating them with a profound 
amount of care and respect.
    We pray now that the Irish people on opposite sides of this last 
divided peace process will heed the example of Saint Patrick and give us 
an even bigger celebration here next year.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister Tony Blair and 
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Marjorie Mowlam, United Kingdom; 
Social Democratic and Labour Party leader John Hume; and Ulster Unionist 
Party leader David Trimble.