Ireland’s “depressing history” of unemployment and “distorted relationships” is now well in the process of being cleansed, President Mary McAleese said today.
Mrs McAleese was addressing the General Synod of the Church of Ireland at a lunch in Galway today, in what she said was the first time a sitting president of Ireland had given such an address.
“We stand today at what I believe to be a pivotal moment in Irish history, one of those rare moments when all the accreted pain, planning and persuasion do indeed lead to a sea change, to a sharp and manifest shift in direction,” Mrs McAleese said.
She said that over the past decade, Ireland had seen the “steady advance of the process of releasing ourselves from the grip of history’s vanities and a wasteful past”.
“The confluence of peace and prosperity has utterly changed our context, and while neither can be taken for granted and both require constant nurturing, the untilled landscape that lies ahead of us demands a response from us as to how we will construct and safeguard our fresh new narrative and in particular what values and aspirations will inform and shape it.
“What we sow now, generations of Irish men and women will reap for years to come.”
Mrs McAleese said the seeds of our historic problems were “sown centuries ago” in political and religious conflicts.
“Their bitter harvest endured too long. The seeds of today’s high achieving, problem-solving Ireland were sown in the widening of access to education that began at the end of the 1960s and in our virtually contemporaneous admission to membership of the European Union. Their harvest has been benign and is still coming in.”
“The seeds of tomorrow’s Ireland are in part being sown in the growth and development of the new relationships constructed under the Good Friday Agreement. They are being sown in this generation’s response to the economic slowdown provoked by a weaker global marketplace.”
The President said she believed that while the changes wrought in Irish society were “largely positive” and driving towards greater social inclusion and equality, they also had “profound implications”.
“I know it is these implications which are a particular focus of this Synod and I wish you well in your deliberations, for your steady and strong leadership will be important as we map the shared journey ahead.”
Mrs McAleese said this was the first generation of Irish men and women “who have been privileged to have been granted the potential of altering the course of our island’s history on such a grand and humanly uplifting scale”.
“Our depressing history of high unemployment and emigration, the mess of distorted relationships reaching east and west, north and south, between Catholic and Protestant, and between our island’s two competing nationalisms, one Irish, the other Unionist, these things are fading into the footnotes of history.”
“That weed-ridden landscape, that spewed toxic seeds long and far ahead of it, is now well into the process of being cleansed - but it is a process and it is still very far from complete.”
The General Synod is the main decision making body of the Church of Ireland and meets once a year to discuss and the work of the church.