Culture making "real contribution" to economic growth

CULTURE is making a "real contribution" to Ireland's economic growth, the President, Mrs Robinson, said on the second day of her visit to Sweden.

Speaking in Stockholm, she defined this "vibrant culture": "It is the spirit, attitude, confidence, creativity which makes people want to try things out, to develop ideas, to enter markets and to refuse to be defeated. It is the spirit which can as readily write a world acclaimed rock album as a ground breaking computer program".

However, Mrs Robinson said she hoped our economic progress did not "turn us inwards and narrow our focus. I hope we will never become smug".

The President told an audience of ambassadors at a Swedish press clut, that while geography had destined Ireland to remain "small and alone", our history as a people mapped Ireland's place "altogether differently".

"Our history binds Ireland to other countries, to our near neighbours, our European partners, the Americas and Africa. Our history demonstrates again and again that our people defied geography as they forged new paths which connected ourselves to the outside, to other shores, to new ideas, to new people."

The construction of a European Union was "not at all" a quest for superpower status, she added. "The challenge is to bring the full richness of European civilisation in all its diversity yet bound together by fundamental democratic values, to bear on our political order."

The President spent yesterday morning at Uppsala University, where she met students of Celtic studies and peace and conflict studies. She also visited the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation named after the late UN secretarygeneral.

Having attended a lunch hosted in her honour by the Stockholm city council, Mrs Robinson visited the offices of the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), which aims to promote democracy around the world. Last night she hosted a dinner in a Stockholm restaurant for King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia.

The President's visit, the firsts official one by an Irish head of state, concludes today with a visit to Kiruna, within the Arctic Circle.