THE President, Mrs Robinson, said at the end of the second day of her visit to France that it was very important for French people to see contemporary Ireland as portrayed by its artists.
She was speaking after she and President Chirac had opened a major exhibition featuring the work of 16 young Irish artists at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.
She expressed her particular pleasure that artists from Belfast, Derry and Portadown were represented with those from the Republic and those living abroad.
The two presidents spent more than an hour at the exhibition, chatting to artists such as Alanna O'Kelly, Paul Seawright, Frances Hegarty and Philip Napier.
They were accompanied by Mr Nicholas Robinson; the Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins; Mrs Bernadette Chirac, and the French Culture Minister, Mr Philippe Douste Blazy.
Speaking in French at the Academe Francaise later, Mrs Robinson noted that the Academic was the guardian of the French language and French identity. She said Ireland's sense of identity was also very important to its people, and they were trying to "create more space in this identity to make it more open, more pluralistic".
Noting that Seamus Heaney - "a very special friend of mine" - had been decorated by the French government recently, she said Ireland was living "in a very creative period".
She said her attendance at the L'Imaginaire Irlandais festival, was "very, very special" for her. She told how the idea of the festival had come out of a conversation with the late President Mitterand in 1992, when he had talked about the great Irish literature of the past, and she had said French people should know about the vibrant Irish culture of the present.
Last night Mrs Robinson attended the Abbey's production of Frank McGuinness's play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, at the Odeon.