President Mary McAleese yesterday said climate change was a contemporary and frightening phenomenon that demanded responsibility at every level.
During the annual presentation of new year's greetings by the diplomatic corps representing more than 50 countries at Áras an Uachtaráin, Mrs McAleese said a response to climate change was required at home and in workplaces as well as at national and international levels. "The recent UN conference in Bali gave us hope that we can construct an effective, concerted response, for nothing less will guarantee the safe future of all our children and our earth," she said.
Mrs McAleese's address to the diplomats was wide-ranging and incorporated human rights, overseas development aid, humanitarian crises and the European Union. There was also a substantial section on the progress made in Northern Ireland in the past year.
The President touched on the threat posed by nuclear weapons proliferation, poverty and disease.
She also spoke of "bringing an end to the misery of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, in Darfur, in Burma and in all the places in the world where life is lived in crisis and despair".
Mrs McAleese continued: "Ireland will shortly deploy troops in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic as part of a new EU peace support mission and in line with our generations-old commitment to the improvement of life in Africa." Turning to economic development in Northern Ireland, Mrs McAleese referred to First Minister Ian Paisley and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, emphasising the new opportunities presented by peace and partnership during their joint trip to Brussels last week.
"In this year when peace has come to Northern Ireland in ways that would have seemed impossible even a short time ago, we who have more than a little idea of how hard it is to build peace welcome the renewed efforts of all peacemakers and particularly those who are working to achieve a two-state solution in the Israel/Palestine conflict.
"Here is a regional conflict with global implications, a linchpin of stable international relationships and a cause of so much daily and unnecessary suffering for so many people. If Ireland's problems can be resolved then hopefully so too can those of the Middle East and indeed elsewhere given the will and the work," said Mrs McAleese.