McAleese highlights opportunities for peace

President Mary McAleese said today the transition from a culture of conflict to that of peace and prosperity was closer than ever before in the shared history of Ireland north and south.

The current generation was being offered “a mosaic of quite amazing opportunities” she said in an address to the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants in Belfast.

She said there was “an evolving peace process, the prospect of long-term comfortable inter-communal relationships, collegial and genial cross-border relationships, mature, consensus-orientated inter-island relationships”.

Mrs McAleese said there was a chance to put the shared island on the map for inward investors and tourists, “to create synergies between our respective indigent business sectors, to send fleets of consumer goods both ways across the border, to spread the benign embrace of jobs and prosperity widely as never before”.

The President added: “The transition from a culture of conflict with all its wastefulness and woundedness to a culture of peace, prosperity and consensus is unfolding little by little.”

Precisely because the destination was so worthwhile, the journey was long, often difficult and undoubtedly testing, she added.

As politicians met again at Stormont in a further bid to find a way of rebuilding the devolved Northern Ireland administration, Mrs McAleese said: “The surge of energy we set out with at the start of the journey is not easy to sustain at Good Friday levels.

“But one thing we can say with certainty is that we are closer to that destination than ever before in our shared histories”.

She spoke of the place in people’s hearts they had long dreamt of – a place where young men and women, Irish, British and European, did not “cower in fear or recoil in contempt at each other’s differences” but saw them as the very seedbed of creativity every successful economy needed.

“North and South working together, East and West working together, Catholic and Protestant working together will surely shorten the road to a future to look forward to,” she said.

Society chairman Feargal McCormack said political stability was the key to building the economic society wanted.

He said if the island of Ireland was to play its part in an enlarged and highly competitive Europe, there was a need to increase innovation and entrepreneurship, expand supply chains, stimulate indigenous competitiveness and attract new foreign investment.

“In this context, the one factor that will make the greatest contribution to European competitiveness on the island of Ireland is political stability”.

Much progress had been achieved since the ceasefires and everyone had to acknowledge that Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland had been “totally transformed” over the past ten years.

Now was the time for the business community to accept greater social responsibility and become “more pro-actively involved in public life”, he said.

Mr McCormack added: “We owe it to our and future generations to ensure that political stability and mutual understanding is the norm on the island of Ireland.”