'No greater love can a man have for the president of a neighbouring country than that he gives up his hot lunch, his table and his cook!" Thus said the President, Mrs McAleese, in Helsinki this week and she is so fond of the story that she told it twice - at the state banquet given in her honour by President Tarja Halolen on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday, in her address to the Paasikivi Society.
Irish and Finnish soldiers, Mrs McAleese said, had a long tradition of working closely and harmoniously together in UN peace keeping operations throughout the world. They worked as next-door neighbours to Irish troops in Lebanon but she had a direct experience of the depth of their friendship from a recent visit to the Irish Forces Headquarters at Camp Clark in Kosovo.
"That day I sat down to a spectacular lunch at tables borrowed from the Finns, plates, knives and forks borrowed from the Finns and chefs borrowed from the Finns. Later I discovered that the Finnish troops, meanwhile, had to eat a cold ready-made lunch on their knees." That generosity, she commented, said a lot about the comfortable relationship between the two countries.