In her first main speech in Australia, the President, Mrs McAleese, last night said the Northern Ireland peace process had weathered the unbearable loss of the three Quinn boys and the massacre at Omagh.
She told assembled dignitaries and Australians of Irish descent in Perth that Ireland had been united in grief and bonded in a determination to build a lasting peace.
"We are in the process of building a peace of which we can all be proud, and anyone who was close to Omagh can only have been struck by the extent of the political realignment. It was the realignment we all prayed for," she said, departing from her prepared text.
"Suddenly, the very otherness of others which kept us divided seemed so inconsequential after Omagh and so small and so insignificant, and suddenly what we all shared in common, that bond, that determination to make this peace agreement work, seemed by far the most important thing on all of our agendas."
Mrs McAleese said, despite the despair of Omagh, she wanted to reassure Australians that the complex peace agreement was now even stronger than on May 22nd when the people of all Ireland overwhelmingly endorsed it.
She said the agreement provided the pathway to consigning division and conflict to the past and building a future based on mutual respect. "We have a lot to learn from your country," she said. "About how mutual respect is built and how it is sustained over generations."