President and husband conferred with honorary doctorates for peace role

PRESIDENT MARY McAleese and her husband Dr Martin McAleese have been conferred with honorary doctorates from Dublin City University in recognition of their role in building peace on the island of Ireland.

The couple received their honours at a graduation ceremony in the Helix theatre in DCU on Saturday. It was the 25th such award for the President while Dr McAleese received an honorary doctorate in Belfast last year.

In his citation, DCU president Ferdinand von Prondzynski said it was an honour for the university, on the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, to mark the contribution made by Mrs McAleese and her husband to bridge-building between all Irish communities and their outreach to all sections of Northern Irish society.

"The President - our first from Ulster - by her tireless efforts and many working visits to her native province, to visit schools, hospitals, community groups, and to meet with representatives of local and central government, has developed and extended the reach of goodwill and peace in Ireland, North and South.

"In support of the work of the President, Dr McAleese has sought to develop greater trust and reconciliation among communities in Northern Ireland, in particular, the working-class loyalist community in his native Belfast."

Mr von Prondzynski singled out Dr McAleese's help in developing projects such as the Belfast Conflict Resolution Consortium. "In troubled areas of the world, many now look to Northern Ireland's example for guidance on a path out of their own conflicts, and the President and Dr McAleese have greatly contributed to the foundations, and the very edifice of peace, which, as WB Yeats told us, 'comes dropping slow'."

Mrs McAleese said Ireland's prosperity should be shared wisely. "We are a people with a vision for our future. It is set out both in the Proclamation and in the Constitution. It speaks of a nation of equals, a place where the children of the nation are cherished equally, a place where there is a true social order where the dignity of each human being is honoured and vindicated.

"It calls us to build our prosperity and share it wisely.Our common vision is set out too in the Good Friday Agreement where we work, as John Hewitt would say, 'to fill the centuries' arrears', building up good, neighbourly partnerships in place of wasteful enmity.

"It is set out in our membership of the European Union where our futures are twinned with those of the citizens of 26 nations whom we are now befriending in ways that were impossible only a short few years ago. It is set out in our global outreach to the world's poor, our membership of the United Nations, our ratification of the charters and treaties that champion human rights, our determined policy of military neutrality and our equally determined civic, global leadership in peace-building and elimination of poverty and disease."

Dr McAleese said he was honoured but "this honour is much more than about me. It is as much about all those courageous men and women from communities in Northern Ireland from whom Mary and I and our nationalist community were estranged for so long. Men and women who took a chance on us and whom we are now able to regard as friends."