ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのTaoiseach Micheál Martin to the IIEA 2021: Ambitions and Challenges for Ireland in a Changing World

First of all, I would like to thank Ruairi, Michael and the IIEA as a whole for the invitation to make this address and to answer your questions.

During my time as leader of Fianna Fáil I have delivered a series of speeches which have provided our commentary on the many and changing challenges facing our country and Europe as a whole.

Last January, in the middle of our election campaign, I used one of these occasions to set out our core beliefs about how Ireland should work with urgency and as part of a strong international community.
This touched on a range of urgent social, economic, political and environmental issues.

A lot has changed since then.
The impact of a dramatic global pandemic and recession is beyond anything we talked about then. And, in truth, we have some way to go before we know the full extent of their impact.

If we look back at the pandemic that occurred just over a hundred years ago, it had political and social impacts which recent research shows caused a much longer crisis than we have previously understood.

By any measure, these are historic times – and they demand of us all that we step up and accept our part in responding.

The need for strong, rules-based structures to guide how countries behave is being challenged on many fronts.

Economic and social pressures are demanding an, at times, radical re-evaluation of policies which were accepted without question until recently.

And core values including the fundamentals of democracy are under attack in many places. In the place of a genuine ideological dispute, we are now confronted with a cynical strategy of division and misinformation.

The appalling events of last week in Washington are part of a wider and more complicated series of urgent challenges.

So, no matter how you look at it, it is impossible to look at the last few years and miss the fact that this is a historic moment.

No short address could possibly cover all of the issues involved, but what I would like to do is to give you a sense of how this Government intends to act.

How we intend to make sure that Ireland is an active, constructive and effective contributor to international developments.

The challenges are profound, but history teaches us that they can be overcome. Central to this must be cooperation by states who share core values and the reinvigoration of strong, rules-based organisations.

The Covid Pandemic
Before I do this, I want to talk about the current state of the pandemic.

We are at a moment balanced between deep danger and great hope. Just as in the past for deadly diseases like polio and smallpox, it is through vaccination that we will be able to put this terrible virus behind us.

Figures released yesterday show that vaccination here is moving forward at pace and primarily limited by the availability of the vaccine.

But our hospitals are experiencing their most terrible week so far of the pandemic. The scale and pace of the increase in cases which we have experienced has been well beyond anything predicted.

Tough measures limiting public activities must remain in place for the moment – and everyone will have to limit contacts for some time.

These are dark days - our ‘bearna bhaoil’, our ‘gap of danger’ – but, I know that we will get through it and we will see brighter times.

And, as I will set out in my remarks today, as we look to the year ahead and beyond, it is my belief that we can recover better and in a more sustainable way.
The Global Context
This pandemic has shown in a very sharp way how interlinked our world is. No country can stand aside and ignore the global context for global social and economic inequality, organised misinformation, the erosion of core values and the existential issue of climate change.

We have to do more than recognise these issues. We need to contribute actively to global, international and regional alliances and initiatives to tackle and to counter them.

And that is why Ireland puts such store in our international engagement, through the EU and the UN in particular.

The fundamentals on which our future peace, prosperity and planet depend can only be dealt with systematically and collectively by countries working together.

There was a time when a statement like this would be seen as banal and taken for granted – but the core of many of the political and economic crises of this moment has been an effort to strip this cooperation of legal strength and strong values.

This Government has taken up office with a shared determination that Ireland will not stand on the side-lines. With respect to all and an understanding of the limits of what a small state can expect to achieve, Ireland will be an engaged global actor.

We will do this as a committed member of the European Union, as an active member of other international bodies and, for the coming term, as a member of the United Nations Security Council.

And this active and progressive policy is also what drives the approach of my Government in terms of the island of Ireland and our relations with our nearest neighbour.

The Good Friday Agreement is founded on the conviction that by working together, on the basis of shared values and principles, we can transcend divisions and progress common interests.

This is the premise that inspires the work of the Shared Island Unit, which I have established.
I’ll return to its work later in my remarks.

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