Check Against Delivery
Good morning everyone.
During the week I spent some time thinking about what I would say to you today. And I found myself struggling to be frank.
So I began thinking about what I would have liked to have heard when I was your age – and what I would have liked to have known back then.
I don’t think I would have wanted to listen to someone telling me what to do. I needed to find my own path.
As future leaders you have to find your own path.
So, with this in mind, I am going to give you three simple lessons - not three things to do – but three Don’t:
- Don’t let people tell you something is impossible. Everything is impossible, until it happens for the first time.
It’s not always possible to look around the world and find role models who look exactly like us. We might feel different because of our gender, our race, or our sexuality. Or there could be a million other things that make us different. Things can seem impossible in the beginning. But once they change, they are changed forever.
- Don’t listen to people who tell you it’s not your turn or to wait your turn. If Barack Obama had listened to people telling him to wait his turn he would still be a community organiser in Chicago. Mary Robinson would never have become our first female President. History is littered with examples of people who waited their turn, and their turn never came.
If you believe in something strongly enough, if you believe you have the ability to achieve something, if you believe that it needs to happen now, then you have to also believe that this is your turn. And:
- Don’t be afraid to fail. Every leader fails. Successful leaders learn from their failures. People who aren’t leaders never try.
Fall but when you do, fall forward.
To give you a personal example, I first ran for the Council when I was in my second year of College – I was 20 years old. Fine Gael needed a candidate in West Blanchardstown and I stepped forward. I put everything into the campaign and I lost. I lost badly. I secured 380 first preferences and was eliminated on the fifth count. But sometimes you learn more from your defeats than your victories. I learned how to hone a message, to run a professional campaign, and I learned to never give up.
Five years later, I ran again and headed the poll and secured the highest first preference in the country. I’m glad I ran in 1999 because I learned a lot from the experience. My message to all of you today is to just go for it.
Opportunities arise when they do, not when it suits and you only live once.
‘Leaders on our Level’ is a good name for this gathering. Leaders are not special people who inhabit a different level, who live above us. You are all around us.
We saw that recently with the student protests held all around the world to demand Climate Action.
You were the leaders, and you forced the rest of us to sit up and listen.
It was something that inspired me to do more.
We saw it in the Referendum on marriage equality where young people led the way.
Politics is too often about the ‘right now’, solving the problems of today. And, don’t get me wrong, that’s important.
Leadership in politics is about what happens next, imagining, investing in, and creating the world of tomorrow.
One hundred years ago across the river from here, a small group of people met at the Mansion House and changed the course of Irish history. The meeting of the first Dáil was a bold, profound and decisive statement about the future of Ireland.
Over the next three years, leaders like Michael Collins and Constance Markievicz worked to help us achieve our freedom.
- At the time, people said it was impossible.
- At the time, people said they should wait their turn.
- At the time, people said they would fail, and fail badly.
They did it anyway, and they succeeded.
Looking around the world today, and the various problems we face, I don’t think we can afford to wait for the leaders of tomorrow.
We need you today.
Thank you.