As is customary I call the Leader of the House to pay tributes to President McAleese. I will then call one speaker from each group.
Tributes to President.
I take this opportunity to congratulate Mrs. Mary McAleese on her inauguration yesterday as the eighth President of Ireland. Mary McAleese is someone of whom we can be proud and she is capable of performing the important ambassadorial functions of the presidency. With her style, grace and obvious intelligence, President McAleese will ably represent Irish people at home and abroad. Given the opportunity she can make a mark similar to that made by her predecessor, Mrs. Mary Robinson, on behalf of the people of Ireland.
Closing the divide between the two traditions on this island has been the dominant political objective for many great figures in Irish history. In her inauguration speech our new President pledged to address this task with vigour and, being a native of Ulster, she is particularly qualified to do so. Yesterday we got a glimpse of the skill and dedication she can being to her role as peacemaker. In her address President McAleese was conciliatory, unthreatening and completely honest when she set out her aspirations for the future and stated that the challenges are awesome but so too are the rewards.
I have no doubt that President McAleese will meet the many obstacles ahead with grace, charm and a unique style. I wish her husband, Martin, and children every success in the future. As they cross the threshold of Áras an Uachtaráin, they will carry with them the nation's best wishes.
I also pay tribute to Deputy Spring, former Leader of the Labour Party, who led his party with great distinction for 15 years. Deputy Spring made a magnificent contribution as Leader of his party and during his two terms as Tánaiste. One of the achievements for which he will be remembered is the great role he played in promoting the current peace in Northern Ireland. Deputy Spring is a great friend and I wish him, his wife and family well. I look forward to listening to his future contributions in the Dáil on behalf of the people of his constituency.
I join with the Leader's warm and sincere words of commendation and praise for President McAleese. Members who had the honour and privilege to be present at yesterday's inauguration in Dublin Castle were hugely impressed by her enormous sense of presence and style and the dignity and energy she brought to that wonderful occasion. Everyone was greatly moved by the eloquence of her address. On behalf of my party, I wish President McAleese every success during the coming seven years.
I was somewhat taken aback by the Leader's tribute to Deputy Spring. I thought tributes were paid only when people left the House or left politics. However, I think Deputy Spring knows how highly I regard him and I will say no more at this stage.
Tá sé an-éasca a bheith ar chomhaigne le Ceannaire an Tí faoi an Úachtarán nua tofa atá againn. Tá inti meascán de na rudaí go léir a théann le chéile chun an tír seo a chur le chéile. In many ways President McAleese is the embodiment of many of the complexities of our society in terms of its problems, its different traditions, its differing traditions within traditions and differing views of how the future should be handled within as well as between traditions.
Although I was not a proposer or supporter in the election, I have every confidence in the quality of the work she will do. I had the privilege of knowing her long before her political aspirations became known. I had the privilege of working with her and I know her to be a woman who will carry out the job of representing all of us of different traditions with dignity, considerable skill, insight and a good deal of humour. The things she was responsible for adding to the ceremony were wonderful and brought great life and vivacity to it. Having children in the Castle yard was a wonderful innovation which added to the sense of a new and different presidency. I am happy to associate me and my Independent colleagues with the Leader's tribute.
There is little more that anybody can say about Deputy Spring. I am still always astonished at those who did not appreciate his sense of humour and those who did not appreciate the man's kindness on many issues. He is a man of extraordinary courtesy. As he said, it is funny to be attending your own funeral and it is funny to be paying tribute to somebody who is younger than many, if not most, of us in this House as having effectively completed one part of his political career.
How old is he?
(Interruptions.)
I hear all sorts of denials here and I do not believe half of them. I am happy to associate me and my colleagues with the tributes to Deputy Spring.
I join with the Leader of the House and the leaders of the groups in congratulating President Mary McAleese on her election and on the quality of the inauguration ceremony. Those of us who were privileged to be present were most impressed by her fine, broadranging speech in which she covered all aspects of the traditions on this island and emphasised what she would do to build bridges to bring people together. I have known President McAleese for 20 years in a personal capacity and I have always considered her to be an extremely capable person. She will be our President, an ambassador abroad and a tremendous person at home who will give dignity to that Office.
She has, as she said, created history; she is the first President from Ulster, and that is to be welcomed. There have been Presidents from Connacht, Munster and Leinster but she is the first from Ulster. That, in itself, is symbolic. The previous President, Mary Robinson, who was a very fine President, created history by being the first woman President, so precedents are being established. I look forward to the next seven years with the present incumbent.
I join with the Leader of the House and the other speakers in paying tribute to Deputy Spring, who has been Leader of my party for the past 15 years, a man who became Leader of the Labour Party at the tender age of 32 after 18 months in the Oireachtas. To lead a party such as the Labour Party, which at the time was divided ideologically and contained strong personalities, was a daunting task. He brought it together and wrought it into a party which has been pulling together as a political organisation over the last few years.
He was Tánaiste in three Governments and was a particularly fine Minister for Foreign Affairs. He contributed enormously to the peace process in the previous two Governments and that will probably be his greatest legacy on the international scene. He is well known at home and abroad as a statesman. He is a clear-thinking, humorous and witty individual and it is only now that the pressures of office have left him that the full extent of his character is being seen. I wish him well in the new freedom and time he will have for himself and his family. No doubt he will remain in the other House and hold high office in future Governments.
It was a privilege to attend yesterday's historic proceedings in Dublin Castle and to hear the words of our new President. When the House paid tribute to our outgoing President, Mrs. Robinson, I said she would be a hard act to follow and in this morning's newspapers Senator Hayes made a similar point in a fine analysis of President McAleese's speech. On the basis of what I heard in Dublin Castle yesterday and saw during the campaign, I am confident that the new President has the qualities required to follow soundly in the footsteps of President Robinson and to progress the work done during her term of office.
In our new President we have someone who understands but does not underestimate the scale of the challenge facing her and the country as she seeks to bridge a gap, which has existed for a considerable time, between those she described as "the comfortable" and "the struggling" in our society. Those remarks send a powerful message to these Houses and we must listen to and act upon it.
Her words on the peace process and reconciliation on this island pointed a way forward and she is in a powerful position to advance that cause, even within the constitutional constraints which surround her office. Anyone who doubted her ability to reach out to the Unionist tradition on this island will have taken great courage from her inauguration speech, which clearly demonstrated a willingness to engage in the wound healing and bridge building which must underpin the peace process. It was also important that she recognised the sacrifice made by many thousands of Irish people during two world wars, and the part that tradition plays in the fabric of our society and history.
Recalling the words of the late President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, President McAleese said her presidency would not have policies but would have a theme. She has signalled her intention to use her Office to maximum potential in the search for lasting peace on this island, the achievement of greater social justice, the promotion of Ireland as a modern, dynamic country, firmly in its stride, and for the creation of a country confident and at ease with itself. Anyone who was there yesterday could not but have been impressed by her words. She has made a good start to her presidency and I look forward to her addressing these Houses to expand on some of the themes she outlined yesterday. I wish her, her husband and her children every good wish and God's blessing during her tenure in the Áras.
We all recognise Deputy Spring's stature as a politician of the highest calibre within the Houses. There was a famous occasion, regularly mentioned, when he dropped the ball during a rugby international but it is fair to say that he almost never took his eye off the political football. His party and the country owe him a great debt. I wish him well in what he does in the future.