Northern Ireland needs to move away from an economy which is heavily dependent on the public sector, Dr Martin McAleese said yesterday.
Dr McAleese, the President's husband, expressed the hope that the new Northern Ireland Executive would foster an economy "characterised by self-sufficiency rather than subsidy" and driven by "investment and entrepreneurialism". He was speaking after being conferred with an honorary degree by the University of Ulster at a ceremony in Belfast City Hall.
A native of Belfast, Dr McAleese was awarded the degree for his contribution to North-South relations and inter-community reconciliation. He has been involved from the earliest stages of his wife's presidency in attempts to reach out to all strands of loyalism.
Over the past decade he has had regular meetings with members of the UDA and its political wing and he has lobbied businessmen on both sides of the Border to invest in loyalist areas.
Last month he relaunched the Belfast Reconciliation Network, bringing loyalist and republican community workers together near the peace lines, which stretch across 13 miles of north and west Belfast.
Dr McAleese received his degree during a cross-Border graduation ceremony attended by Northern Ireland's finance minister, Peter Robinson.
MSc degrees in Innovation Management in the Public Service at the University of Ulster and the Letterkenny Institute of Technology were conferred on 12 civil servants and public-sector high-fliers from North and South.
Speaking after the conferring, Dr McAleese said that he had grown up in Belfast before the Troubles at a time when there was poverty, emigration and unease.
It was a place where relations between North and South were poor, commerce between the two parts of Ireland was "non-existent" and the relationship between the Irish and British governments was problematic.
"Look how all of this has changed so dramatically," he commented.
Dr McAleese said that he wished the members of the new government every success as they "go about the business of underpinning peace with prosperity and reconciling two communities into one fair and equal society".
He also wished the new graduates every success and hoped that they would be "powerful engines of dynamism, consolidating the peace and bringing prosperity".
It is the second time in as many days that the President's husband has given a high-profile speech.
Yesterday, he told a Barnardos family support group in Cherry Orchard, Dublin, that fathers needed to have a greater role in raising their children in single-parent families.
