Mary McAleese, the president of Ireland and a devout Catholic, spoke to Edward Pentin during a visit to the Vatican about these historic developments, her hopes for the Ahern government, her family’s flight from Belfast because of “the troubles” and her efforts to bridge the sectarian divide. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: You used the word miraculous to describe the recent events in Northern Ireland. How confident are you that peace will be maintained in the province? Mary McAleese: The peace will be maintained if we work to ensure the peace will be maintained. I am sure that we have turned the corner, on that past world where problem solving meant problem solving through the use of violence. I think in this generation, which is the most educated, the most sophisticated, the most confident ever in Ireland, north or south, or in England—east or west—we see a problem-solving generation determined to use the best of tools, the most humanely decent of tools. That means democratic dialogue. It’s a wonderful thing to have lived long enough to see the Irish and the British enjoy their best relationship in 900 years, to see the island of Ireland enjoy peace, partnership and prosperity, that it has never shared before. To see in Northern Ireland a new mood for partnership exemplified by a new government, which is comprised of people who only a short time ago found it difficult to be in the same room with one another. I think we are looking forward to a good future.
But there is still said to be deep sectarianism at the grass-roots level that will take far longer to overcome. I would agree there is a longstanding culture of sectarianism and I would agree that requires to be worked on, it needs to be worked through, it needs to be worked beyond, but also saying and cautioning this: that the politicians would never have been able to come this far or make the decisions or cross the Rubicons they crossed without huge popular support. The fact that the politicians have been able to do that indicates to me that actually by far the vast majority of people understand the responsibility they have for changing the sectarian past and building a nonsectarian future.
You spent part of your childhood in Belfast, in the heart of “the troubles.” How much has this affected your role as president, and how much of a personal role did you play in the peace process? I grew up in an area that was predominantly Protestant. … For only a short period of my life—a very, very short period—I lived in what could be described as a Catholic ghetto. I think that gave me a breadth of understanding, and a comprehension of the northern problem, [that] I was able to bring to bear in my work as president. It’s no accident then that when I became president, the theme that I chose for my presidency is subsumed in the phrase “building bridges,” because I knew that the big thing that we lacked on the south axis as well as within Northern Ireland was trust. I’ve placed my life as president in the service of that agenda, which is building a place to be proud of. An Ireland where everyone feels that they count, where everyone does count, where no one is marginalized because of their identity label.
But another criticism of the Northern Ireland power-sharing agreement is that the province, led by Reverend Ian Paisley of the [Protestant] Democratic Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness of [the Roman Catholic] Sinn Fein, is now run by extremists, leaving no room for moderates. If you were to say to anybody in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland a year ago that the DUP and Sinn Fein would be together in government, I think people would have been rightfully skeptical. Yet all of us knew that the only resolution of the north’s future, could only happen when the DUP and Sinn Fein sat down together. That has now happened, and although you could regard them as extremes, and I think it’s fair to say that, at the same time, you have to remember they represent huge numbers, tens of thousands of people. It is not that Northern Ireland has moved to the extremes. It is that the extremes have moved to the center.
What are your hopes for the government that will be formed by Bertie Ahern? Ireland has gone from—in my living memory—being a Third World country, a poor country that people emigrated from, to a country that is now one of the leading global economies, to being a country that people emigrate to, to being a confident, highly educated, problem-solving country. It’s something to be inordinately grateful for, and I think that’s clearly set to continue. This is a generation like no other in Ireland. So my children and the children like them are growing up in a very, very different environment. They’re also growing up with two things I didn’t grow up with: I didn’t grow up with prosperity in Ireland, and I didn’t grow up with peace. And a third thing I certainly didn’t ever think I’d see in my lifetime is partnership. And now I see all of those things coming in this huge, surging confluence. I think Ireland is set for the best story ever in its history.
