We now proceed as agreed with tributes to the President. The Chair has already made his views known on this matter. I remind the House that under the Constitution the President is not answerable to this House and Members should keep this in mind in their contributions. There should be no criticism, direct or otherwise, of the President. I suggest that a time limit of five minutes be applied to party leaders. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Tributes to President.
I welcome this opportunity to say some words of tribute to the President just 24 hours before she leaves office. President Mary Robinson has represented the people of Ireland with great distinction for almost seven years in what has been, by common consent, an outstandingly successful term of office. The very best wishes of everybody in this House and throughout the country go to her as she takes up her new and challenging role as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights after the formal ceremony in Áras an Uachtaráin with the party leaders. We know she will bring the unique style, insight and personal commitment to her new position that she has brought to every position she has held whether in her professional office, in the legal world, as a Senator or in relation to other challenges she undertook in the voluntary sector.
From her earliest involvement in public affairs President Robinson has always espoused human rights issues. This honour bestowed on her confirms the quality of her work, the strength of her convictions and the length of her committed public service. Her appointment comes at an important time, the eve of the 50th anniversary of the historic UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the fifth anniversary of its modern day equivalent, the Vienna Declaration.
On behalf of the Government, the party I have the honour to lead, and the nation, I thank her for the tremendous job she has done, her success in making the presidency so inclusive, and the amount of travelling she did to achieve that aim. Regardless of the occasion, the function, the parish, the community, the religion, she participated whenever she was asked. Let me say, on a lighter note, that I know that because she was in attendance at every place I visited. That was an extraordinary commitment by her and her family.
I have no doubt that what she did for Irish exiles around the world will always be remembered. In speaking of the Irish diaspora she told the Dáil that the communities she had visited in Australia, the United States and further afield had a longing to be part of the Irish nation but that they felt alienated. She worked particularly hard to make them feel included, just as she worked to make everybody in the Irish community feel included.
On behalf of the Government and Irish people at home and abroad, I wish the President, her husband, Nick, and her children, Aubrey, Tess and William every success and happiness as they move into a different career. I thank them all for their selfless pursuit of the public interest on behalf of the nation over seven years. We owe them a great debt of gratitude. It is not just a great personal honour for the President but an honour for this nation that she takes up this office. We thank her for serving a remarkable term of office and bid her a fond farewell.
I pay tribute to the seven years of service to this nation that President Robinson has given. She brought the institutions of this State into contact with people who were previously excluded. People who felt they were the subject of discrimination in our society felt that they had a friend and, to an extent, a home in Áras an Uachtaráin. That concept of the presidency is uniquely one that was brought about by Mary Robinson herself. She enlivened the office of President in a very human way. In her seven years as President she epitomised the modernisation of Ireland. She was able to present on an international stage a view of Ireland which she personalised and embodied that was very different from the traditional view that many people who were relatively unfamiliar with this country might have had. In a sense, her presidency showed that Ireland had entered the second half of the 20th century, whereas many people had previously seen it as mired in the second half of the 19th century. Without the election to office of President Robinson, many of those who now have a modern and realistic view of Ireland would still hold that traditional view which is out of date.
It is important that Mary Robinson emphasised Ireland's role in working for justice in international relations. Her visits to Rwanda and to other areas in the world where people were suffering epitomised the generous spirit of the Irish people vis-à-vis those less fortunate than themselves. She was someone of whom we could be proud.
As Taoiseach it was my privilege to advise and consult with the President in the exercise of my office. Obviously, this is not a matter I can discuss publicly. However, the President showed immense personal warmth to me in all my consultations with her, which I appreciated very much. The office which it is the present Taoiseach's privilege to exercise, which was mine to exercise for a time, is a lonely, difficult and stressful one. It was of great help to me that the President was someone with whom I could speak freely and with whom I was able to enjoy such warm personal relations.
I wish to pay particular tribute to Nick Robinson. It is clear that the role of husband of a President is a particularly difficult one, probably more difficult than that of a wife of a President. Nick Robinson performed that role in an exemplary manner. We can be as proud of him as we are of the President. As the Taoiseach has said, we also pay tribute to their children who helped them both do the job so well.
We can rejoice that the first citizen of this country is now taking responsibility for universal human rights. The world economy is being globalised and trade and the making of money are to be governed by international norms. Profit and profit making are to be enhanced by the existence of international norms in finance and trade. It will be an inhuman and heartless world if that introduction of global rules for trade and moneymaking is not matched by equally strong global rules for the protection of human and social rights. I believe the work President Robinson will do as a lawyer in introducing global human rights and her distinguished service in the office which she enters tomorrow will make the world a more humane place.
Tomorrow in Áras an Uachtarán, President Robinson will effectively resume her status as an ordinary citizen of this State. It is a measure of the sophistication and development of this country that we have put the concept of dynastic succession behind us forever. Ordinary citizens can be selected by others to fill the role of Head of State and to have the responsibility of representing this Republic.
President Robinson took office seven years ago with a series of commitments, among which was her desire to expand the role of the office within its constitutional powers, to become a voice for the voiceless and to ensure that as Ireland modernised and became a more wealthy and materially secure society those who felt excluded or were excluded would be brought into the wider family of the nation. It is an extraordinary tribute to her ability as a constitutional lawyer, to her skills as a politician and to her sensitivity as a human being that she managed to do that within the narrow constraints and confines of the constitutional definition and role of our President.
She did more than that. Any one of us who has travelled in any capacity across the globe will have encountered people of Irish extraction or people who were born here but left, not for economic reasons, but because they did not feel comfortable or free in the narrow closed valley of the squinting windows which reflected the Ireland of the late 1940s, the 1950s and in some respects the early 1960s. She enabled those people to once again be proud of being Irish. She put Ireland on the world map in a way we had not previously seen our country represented. As Deputy Bruton and the Taoiseach said, she reached out to the Irish diaspora, which we failed to do for many years. It is estimated that approximately 73 million people throughout the world describe themselves as either Irish-American, Irish-Australian or British-Irish and in an extraordinary way she enabled us to connect with them and them to connect with us. I pay tribute to the sensitivity and manner in which she did that.
I was chairman of the campaign committee that successfully campaigned for her election. I do not know of any other candidate who continued to increase his or her support after being elected. The skills she manifested in her role and the generosity of the Irish people in recognising the wonderful job she did enabled her to do that.
I also pay tribute to the two candidates she defeated, in particular the late Brian Lenihan, a former Member of the House who, with characteristic generosity, stated on a radio programme some years later that on reflection he believed she was doing a better job than he could have done. That typical act of generosity from Brian Lenihan reflects the admiration across all parties that people have for President Mary Robinson. Like the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, on behalf of my party I wish her success, happiness and more family time than she has had in the past seven years. I thank her sincerely for what she has given to this Republic.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to pay tribute to President Mary Robinson. Yesterday we mourned the passing of two of the world's most remarkable women. President Mary Robinson can be included in the list of the world's remarkable women. Her election as President of Ireland redefined the presidency. While its constitutional role did not change, in the way she behaved as President she sought to take it to its limit and in doing so won the support of people all over the country. As the Taoiseach stated, it was an inclusive presidency; everybody empathised with her. Last Friday many Members of the House were in her company at a business lunch. It was encouraging to witness up to 1,000 business people applaud her enthusiastically, empathising with her and paying tribute to her remarkable work.
It was not only the business community or important people that Mary Robinson included in her presidency. She made the office open to the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. She spent a great deal of time visiting deprived areas seeking to give encouragement and support and was willing to listen. As the former Taoiseach said, she was always warm and human in the way she dealt with individuals. In any encounter I had with her, I found her extremely relaxed and she made me feel very much at home on the few opportunities I had to visit Áras an Uachtaráin.
It is right that we should pay tribute to her because she has been an outstanding role model for women. We are all proud that a woman has done the best job ever performed in the presidency, although that is no reflection on her predecessors. Hers was not a sleeping presidency and the person who will succeed her has an onerous task. I am delighted to see such interest in the job but when the nation votes for a successor to President Mary Robinson it will place him or her in a difficult position, because she will be a hard act to follow.
It is right that she should now have responsibility for international human rights because no one is more qualified to take on that role. She has been a great ambassador for Ireland and for human rights. I know she is daunted by the task but I have no doubt she will perform it as she has all the others she has taken on in the past.
As others have said, the wider diaspora also empathised with the President. In the past they might not even have known who the President of Ireland was. When I was in the United States recently, I was surprised at the number of times I was asked about her. People knew where she was going and what she had done. Our economy has benefited enormously from the image she portrayed of a modern, progressive nation. In the way she carried out her role, President Mary Robinson personified the new, modern Ireland.
We can be rightly proud of what she has done and it is fitting that we should thank her today. It would be ironic if the procedures of this House were such that we could pay tribute to her if she passed away but not when she moves on to another job. We must examine our more archaic procedures to ensure they do not prevent us doing what we have now succeeded in doing.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words on the last day of Mrs. Mary Robinson's presidency. I was proud to have supported her campaign and to have actively campaigned with and for her. I was also pleased that, as Deputy Quinn said, her support grew after her election. That is a tribute not only to President Mary Robinson but to our people and politicians who recognised the values she brought to the job.
She made an enormous contribution to the self-confidence and pride of our people and the many millions outside the country who regard themselves as Irish. She did not do that in a chauvinistic way — she did not identify or define her Irishness in a narrow sense but rather she broadened it. She made it clear that Ireland was now a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. Importantly, she also suggested that we had not reached the end of our development, that there were many things we needed to do to live up to our aspiration to be a just and fair society. She remained within the boundaries of the law relating to the Irish Presidency while at the same time challenging us to think and do more to end the disadvantage and alienation which, as practising politicians, we see all around us on a daily basis.
She showed a new face of Ireland to the world. As has been said, there is hardly any corner of the world where she is not known and where she has not created a positive view of the country. She came into office at a time of a growth in self-confidence for a whole range of reasons, not least to do with football and at a time when we needed a person like her to represent this new, self-confident Ireland.
She promised to be an imaginative President and she was. I have no doubt she will bring the same imagination and innovation to her new job as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Too often, human rights are regarded simply as the right to vote, free speech, a free trial and so on. While those are very fundamental rights, equally fundamental are the rights to a roof over one's head, to make a contribution to society, feed and rear one's children and to education. I have no doubt she will bring that view to her new job.
Far too many conflicts are based on a sense of alienation, of not being fully part of the society into which one is born and to which one seeks to make a contribution. If we can learn anything from the presidency of Mary Robinson, it is that we must have this broader view of the rights and role of the citizen. Mary Robinson succeeded in presenting that broader view and the best tribute we can pay her is to seek to apply the views she expressed and the approach she adopted to the politics we pursue.
Mary Robinson was by far the most popular and accomplished President we have ever had. She gave us a sense of pride and represented the modern and pluralist Ireland with great success. I am proud the Green Party supported her campaign, which support she was delighted to receive. Ironically, she was a failed Dáil candidate which shows we can look outside this House for a successful President.
I got to know Mary Robinson during my term as Lord Mayor of Dublin when I became aware of her great interest in Northern Ireland. Her advice to me on becoming Lord Mayor was to build links with the two communities in Northern Ireland. She was, of course, respected in the Unionist community.
She believed in the notion of self empowerment. On visiting many communities throughout Ireland, she gave that sense of self belief to women's groups in particular.
I wish the President well in her new role. She was always a champion of human rights. I particularly remember her visit to Rwanda. Our loss will be the UN's gain and I know she will do an outstanding job.