PRESIDENT MARY McAleese on her last official visit to Northern Ireland last night spoke of her happiness at the success of the peace process.
Mrs McAleese, attending a dinner and reception in her honour at Hillsborough Castle hosted by Northern Secretary Owen Paterson, said that when she began her first term of office 14 years ago “an evening like this was very far from my contemplation”.
“Yet that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is hosting a farewell event for the President of Ireland is surely a testimony to the changed times that are now our shared context and the much improved prospects for a stable long-term peace which are now within our contemplation,” she added. Among the wide cross-section of guests in Hillsborough Castle last night were First Minister Peter Robinson, Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty, Church of Ireland primate Archbishop Alan Harper, Fr Brian Darcy, head of Co-operation Ireland Peter Sheridan, Assembly speaker William Hay, PSNI deputy chief constable Judith Gillespie, Tyrone manager Mickey Harte and John McAreavey – husband of his late daughter Michaela – and British ambassador to Ireland Julian King.
Mrs McAleese thanked political, church and community leaders present “for clearing the way to a future far beyond the dysfunction of sectarianism, the perennial paramilitarism and the frustrations of inequality, far beyond the hardwired communal distrust, the poor cross-Border relations and the distant relations between Ireland and Great Britain.
“So much that is good has been achieved in recent years. The cost was high for those bereaved or injured in body and soul by the conflict. The heft needed to get from conflict to peace was massive but it has created an unstoppable momentum that the episodic spasms of violent resistance to peacemaking simply cannot hope to stop or slow down,” she added.
Referring to the upcoming 100-year anniversaries such as the signing of the Ulster Covenant, the Easter Rising and the beginning of the first World War, she added: “The forthcoming decade of significant centenary commemorations on this island can scare us or dare us to showcase the parity of esteem, peaceful co-existence and the mutual respect that are to be the hallmarks of the new relationships between those who share this island.”
