Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m delighted to have been invited to the naming of this bridge in honour of our former President Mary McAleese.
Through her two terms at Aras an Uachtarain she built so many bridges between hearts, minds, imaginations.
So it is fitting that, today, we gift her the real thing. Given her latest studies in canon law, it will not be lost on her that she was indeed a Pontifex - a woman who made bridges.
To those who have journeyed here today from Northern Ireland, and indeed further a field, you are very welcome. I want to extend an especially-warm welcome to all of you who come here today to represent proudly the Protestant Unionist and Loyalist tradition.
We meet at the waters of the Boyne, on what is a sacred place for both traditions.
I know that you hope, as I do, that the bridge we name here today will remain a symbol of all we have achieved for our peoples of this island, north and South.
And indeed for the peoples of both islands, Ireland and the United Kingdom, who have embarked on a new era of understanding, respect and friendship that is real, warm one that is deeply-felt and valued on both sides.
The Battle of the Boyne symbolises the history not alone of our peoples, our islands, but of Europe itself.
Here in July 1690 two English kings, a father-in-law and a son-in-law, fought at the head of their respective armies.
It was a Game of Thrones, involving temporal and spiritual power. Behind King James the Second were French forces sent by Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King. Assembled behind King William of Orange was a grand Alliance of several European countries.
Irishmen, of ancient and newer stock, stood on both sides of a battle said to be the last of European significance fought on Irish soil. French dominance in Europe, the English throne, and religious power in Ireland all hung in the balance.
But history did as it does. It moved on, leaving human wreckage in its wake. This battle became one in a long list of similar encounters to follow.
On this island the Battle fought on this river took on an iconic status of triumph or defeat. Were we winners? Or were we losers?
Last month was important in the history of this river and our views of it. When an ancient log-boat was found, one that could be five thousand years old, I believe the general interest was how did the boatbuilders live?
How did they rear their families? How did they live, die? Who did they love? I doubt if the first thought of anyone here was were the precursors to Harland and Wolff, Protestant or Catholic, atheist or agnostic - would they have been for Billy or Jimmy...?
I think we all thought you know, they were us back then. Or, maybe more startlingly, we are them now.
We are human with the same human needs, hopes, emotions. All that separates us is time. This bridge over these troubled, and for too long troubling, waters comes at the right time.
It reminds us that our differences can be accommodated and respected, our wounds healed, our divisions can always be bridged.
That was Mary McAleese’s belief. She became President as the Peace Process was transforming how we saw ourselves and each other on this island of Ireland. She worked diligently to ensure that all communities were included, and felt included, in the transformation.
The work Mary McAleese and Martin McAleese did for people - on both sides - changed minds, attitudes and lives across the island and across the communities.
In her Presidency, for those of the Unionist community, Dublin became not an alien city to be feared and avoided, but a place of real and warm welcome particularly Aras an Uachatarain itself.
She made it that from the day she took office six months before the Good Friday Agreement.
The relationship between two islands and its peoples changed profoundly thereafter.
In 1998, President McAleese first met Queen Elizabeth II.
They stood beside each other at the Peace Park at Messines, the President of a Republic and a monarch united in their remembrance and honour of the men who fought and died in the Great War.
This solemn occasion, symbolising a change and warming in the attitudes of both countries towards our difficult mutual history, has helped us in our vernacular marking of events of the past we share.
On 1 July, in the early-morning birdsong,men and women from all over this island stand together at the crater at Lochnagar, La Boisselle, to remember those men who fought and died and went missing at the Battle of the Somme.
I know that Mary McAleese was proud to go to the battlefields to honour those who fought for the greater good, alongside those who others would have considered, and for too long retained in their hearts, as adversaries.
Her welcoming of Queen Elizabeth II to Dublin on the first State Visit to Ireland of a British monarch was for all of us a la d’ar saol.
A day in the life. She ensured that what was a productive and respectful relationship between the Governments of Ireland and Britain became a warm friendship between the peoples of Ireland and Britain.
Ladies and Gentlemen, That relationship is precious. And like all precious relationships we must mind it, nurture it, cherish it.
As we meet at the waters of the Boyne my hope and desire for us all is that we not be divided by our history but be united in our humanity. That we be true to our respect for all the traditions - North and South.
I wish for us all, and all our children in the long and hopefully happy generations to come, that this bridge will stand as a reminder of what is always possible always desirable.
Understanding, beginnings, transformation,
peace, joy, hope.
ENDS