CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY              23.06.2009

Address by Mary Mc ALEESE

President of Ireland

on the occasion of the third part of the 2009 Ordinary Session

of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly

(Strasbourg, 22-26 June 2009)

Mr President,

Mr Secretary General,

Members of the Parliamentary Assembly,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you, Mr President for your kind remarks and for your welcome to this Assembly. It is a particular pleasure to meet with so many parliamentarians from throughout Europe. You represent so many of Ireland’s neighbours, friends and partners. You know the hopes, ambitions, worries and fears of your constituents and through you their voices are made known in this Assembly and Council as well as in your own national parliaments. More than that you are leaders and in times of crisis it is the vocation of leaders to be the absorbers of uncertainty, the galvanisers of hope. Over the sixty years since this Council was born, each generation has needed hope and good leadership for each has faced its own challenges. Now we face ours and in places like this we face them together, leaning on one another, learning from one another, working our way together from problems to solutions, from a tough present to a better future. You have an individual and collective power which can inspire Europe’s people to new levels of self-belief and focus, capable of transcending and overcoming even the greatest difficulties. Members of this Council have stared into more than one abyss.

Sixty years ago millions had died or been displaced in Europe in two savage world wars, and from the chaos there came fresh voices calling Europeans to a new future, shared, egalitarian, peaceful and democratic. They began a great project to put in place a robust new political architecture for Europe on which to build democratic stability, fairness and equality - the Council of Europe was an important pillar of that architecture. Ireland was one of the ten original signatories of the Treaty of London; in fact our representatives played quite an active part in the drafting of the statutes. It was a modest enough start but gradually it gathered momentum developing into the foremost regional human rights body in the world, supported by forty seven member states, all of whom are represented here today.

Each member state brings to the table the character and identity of its people, its unique history and culture, language and perspective. The Council is a place where strangers become friends, where stories that need to be known and heard are shared so that we do not inhabit a world of peoples who are unknown and mysterious to us, but a world of colleagues and neighbours. In this place you learn and you teach us about managing differences, building respect, promoting consensus through that simple human phenomenon of building effective bridges of contact and communication with one another.

The then Irish Foreign Minister, Seán Mc Bride, sixty years ago stressed that what mattered was “the sincerity of our attachment to the fundamental rights and principles which form the ethical foundations of the structure of human society and our willingness to give effect to them”.

Those fundamental rights and the willingness of Europe’s men and women to proclaim and vindicate them are set out in the Council’s most famous and enduring legacy - the European Convention of Human Rights – drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and with a legal as well as a moral power in its remarkable enforcement machinery of the Commission and Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers representing the Governments of all member states. As you said recently, Mr President, “The Convention reads almost like poetry, perhaps because it was drawn up so soon after the nightmare of the war, when memories of it were still fresh and there was absolute community of purpose about what needed to be done”.

For the first time Europe’s citizens had the safety net of access to a respected supra-national forum if they could not trust their own judiciary or state to give them justice. The Convention opened a window on each of our states, held all of us accountable before the international community and measured us against the principles we had signed up to.

This dynamic system of human rights protection gives comfort to citizens that they are not completely at the mercy of closed systems and it challenges states to live up to their human rights obligations. But it is a professional and impartial system which inspires respect in all those who encounter it whatever side they are on. Quality, coherence and speed of access to Court judgements are essential to good governance throughout the member states and to the credibility of the institution itself.

The essential principles on which the Council of Europe and the Convention on Human Rights are founded are summarised as Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law; words recited, repeated, cynically manipulated and abused so often that it would be easy to empty them of meaning. But here in this forum that is not an option. Here they have to be given meaning, over and over again, in the teeth of those who would turn those words on their heads. That is the promise that was made here sixty years ago that member states would practise the rule of good law so that their citizens could enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms.

These three principles, of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and the body of laws, conventions and practice based on them are often spoken of as the toolbox of the Council. They are well-used tools, unlikely to be stored away any time soon. Some of the shadows that the founding fathers wished to banish are again darkening the landscape, racism, sectarianism, ethnic hatreds, inter-state conflict including recent armed conflict among some of our Member States.

Resort to arms in this day and age is a badge of dreadful human failure for we have access to sophisticated and credible dispute-settling instruments and intermediary bodies. These have been devised specifically by the international community to help prevent the outbreak of conflict and they should be high on the agenda where tensions threaten to erupt. The Commissioner for Human Rights has been to the fore throughout the member states in attempting to bring to international attention the tensions and distrust which regrettably persist between ethnic groups in Europe, and directly to try to defuse them. I salute his efforts and constructive engagement aimed at alleviating these problems and creating space for mutually agreed ways forward. I also salute those in this forum who have consistently practised restraint and moderation in their public comments on difficult political problems. Your sensitivity has helped cool tempers and to allow more measured, humanly decent options to germinate.

It may be helpful in this context to mention developments in Ireland, which for generations could not escape from inter-communal and political conflict. The story has changed in this generation, the most educated and problem-solving of all generations. The backstop to that age-old conflict is contained in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It also contains the road-map to the future. When the Agreement was put to referenda in both the North and South of Ireland it became evident that an overwhelming majority of people of different faiths and politics shared one major thing in common, they did not want to keep on repeating the mistakes of the past. They wanted peace and a chance at prosperity and they knew deep down that their best chances lay, not in the old culture of conflict where no-one felt safe, but in a new culture of consensus based on partnership, equality and mutual respect.

That sentiment was not enough on its own though; it needed structures to give it a voice, to nurture and develop and sustain it and that is the strength of the Good Friday Agreement which now underpins a new shared administration, a more representative and trusted police force and better relations within Northern Ireland, between both parts of Ireland and between Ireland and Britain. All three sets of relationships had been twisted by the forces of history. They have been straightened by the forces of democracy and human rights.

A significant outcome of the Agreement was the establishment of the Irish Human Rights Commission and its sister the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. Both Commissions are working individually and together towards the development of a genuinely shared future for all, based on respect, tolerance, justice and equality. Policing was historically a very fraught subject in Northern Ireland and is now transformed thanks to the implementation of the proposals set out in the Patten Report on police reform.

That report said “Upholding human rights and upholding the law should be one and the same thing.” Those words should find an echo in this Chamber and the champions of human rights here can take real encouragement from the remarkable success of police reforms in Northern Ireland. There policing was not so long ago seen as partisan, but is today accepted by all. Cross-border cooperation between police forces has never been better, paralleling the growing cross-border good neighbourliness which is replacing an old culture of distrust. These changes are the visible manifestation of a genuinely historic transformation of relations on the island of Ireland, and in relations between Britain and Ireland. We are living in an era of profound cooperation between the Governments and peoples of Ireland and of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is set to reveal to us now powers, partnerships and synergies which history denied us. Many things still divide us but these are now managed in a mutually respectful structured environment. The things which unite us now excite us for they are full of good possibilities.

We could not have arrived at this new chapter in our history without our friends in Europe, America, and here in Strasbourg. The human rights institutions of the Council of Europe created a context and impetus for changed processes in Northern Ireland. They validated reform, provided insights into workable frameworks, set a baseline for the requisites that conduce to human dignity and willed all of us on to work our way through to mutually acceptable and respectful solutions. We owe you a debt of gratitude for your advocacy and your support. Your abiding interest is evident in the fact that the Assembly will award its first Human Rights prize tomorrow to British Irish Rights Watch, a much respected and impartial organisation, which has made an invaluable contribution to securing truth and justice for victims of the conflict and to ensuring that there is no impunity for offenders.

Understanding and accepting the past is essential for negotiating our way to a better future - but it is a very very difficult process. It can be particularly difficult to face up to unpleasant facts or events in which our forebears or even our contemporary colleagues may have been involved. Our sense of identity and pride so easily conduce to a desire to minimise or deny appalling actions, to only see the mote in the other’s eye. Learning to listen to “the other”, to stand in his or her shoes long enough to get a glimpse of what life looks like from the other side, is key to building up enough traction to move forward. Tolerance, cooperation and trust have to be built the hard way, handshake to handshake, eye to eye and courageous outreach across history’s chasms. The Council has been doing great work in this regard for many years in various regions and I have been specially struck that this week, you will consider a report on teaching history in conflict and post-conflict areas, with my countrywoman Cecilia Keaveney as rapporteur. We have all been taught so well how to remember our own side’s story, now we need to remember differently, more broadly, more generously, more openly, not naïve to our own faults, not naïve to the faults of others, but no longer making of history’s edited highlights an armoury to be ransacked for weapons to hurl at the other, at the enemy. Our past may be a Europe of old enemies; our future has to be a Europe of old friends.

Political leadership is key to the befriending and partnership processes on which tomorrow’s Europe is being built. Yet worryingly we hear talk of a democratic deficit and the alienation of voters and citizens from political leadership and institutions of government and the state. Too many people have a strong feeling that those engaged in politics, administration, business and law are pursuing self-interest rather than the common good. It is a dangerous source of disillusionment which has the capacity to hollow out our democratic values and our hard-earned democratic stability. It fuels vacuums in which extremism gains footholds aided and abetted by apathy. You are our bulwark against these dangers, as individuals and as a group. Your continuing commitment to ethical standards, a fidelity to best practice, to accountability and transparency are the surest way to sustain the Council’s honourable place in history.

The news media play a massive role in all of today’s healthy democracies and I know the Council of Europe has been turning its thoughts to issues arising from the information revolution. We all benefit hugely from the work of a free and responsible press, shining light into dark corners of our societies. We are all rendered vulnerable by anarchic communications conduits which nurture hatred and extremism, pursue witch hunts, and plan violence on a scale of global reach never before possible. Along with issues of ownership, commercial links and the implications of monopoly or hidden control for press freedom and journalistic standards, this is an area of huge complexity which is likely to usefully occupy this Assembly and organisation for many years to come, but your deliberations will be of real consequence for Europe’s future, including our short-term future. Beset as we virtually all are by the most deep-seated economic problems for many years, it is essential that particular groups of people like immigrants, Roma and travellers, and other minorities do not experience a resurgence of the populist prejudice and unfair blame which has blighted their lives in so many generations. This forum is such a vital voice of care for those who get the blunt end of the stick too often in life through no fault of their own.

In Ireland a period of high economic growth and prosperity brought many migrants to our shores reversing a centuries old pattern of outward migration from Ireland. We know enough about being discriminated against in our own land and in every land we emigrated to, to have a special sensitivity to the challenges facing our new citizens. We are determined to be a place that gets right the welcome for the stranger, the openness to a social integration which remains genuinely respectful of and curious about other ethnic and cultural identities. Your role in influencing the formation of just, humane – and sensible – immigration and integration policies throughout Europe is a help to all of us and a valuable resource as we try to do our best to cope with so many tough new economic realities.

Those harsh economic realities are of course unevenly distributed and they contribute to inhuman practices such as trafficking of poor and fragile human beings. Here again the work of the Council of Europe is helping all of us to push back that tide of evil and to give real meaning to the lofty words of the Convention, giving them a tangible impact in the lives of men, women and children.

One of the strengths of today’s educated and more confident Ireland is the maturity it has, and needs, to confront and attempt to redress wrongs that were done in years past to our own poor and vulnerable. A recent report on abuse of children in residential care who have now grown to damaged and chaotic adulthoods as a result of damage inflicted on them by so-called care agencies and in most cases Christian agencies, has provoked a huge and ongoing debate. This questioning, although painful, can only benefit our society in the long run. It has brought us face to face with the promise set out in our Proclamation in 1916 to be a republic which cherished the children of the nation equally. We know in searing detail how often that promise was betrayed and we have this opportunity now to do what it takes to make amends to those brutalised by that betrayal and to keep that promise for today’s and tomorrow’s children. We are not foolish enough to believe we have outed all the evil visited upon children, nor are we parochial enough to believe that these problems are unique to Ireland. Our experience is a wake up call to us and to all those who care for children world-wide to ensure that the highest standards of care and accountability are enforced whether in the home or in institutions. We are “the big people” around here and children depend utterly on us, our advocacy, our watchfulness, our love. They discover too late and too personally the consequences of our neglect and our failures.

We are far from living in an ideal world with strong, fair, and effective legal, judicial and prosecutorial systems. The many weaknesses are rehearsed before the European Court of Human Rights day in and day out. They tell us how much work has to be done and is being done to create a Europe where the rule of good law prevails, law people can trust no matter who or what they are, law that protects each one of us as a good parent would, that sets acceptable boundaries for us as a good parent would and that creates the space in which we can each flourish and blossom in peace and safety, as a good parent would wish for a loved child.

We once had a Europe suffused, suffocated and savaged by hatred. We knew we were capable of better. That is how this Council came into being, to help humanity to be better. You are not in danger of being made redundant any day soon. Let me finish with what I hope are the prophetic words of Teilhard de Chardin; “Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will discover fire.”

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

My congratulations on this very significant anniversary, my thanks for all the Council has done and keeps on doing for Europe and her large brood of children.