Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in congratulating President Clinton on his trip to Northern Ireland, Ireland, and England and I commend him for his continuing contributions to the peace process which have helped silence the guns for more than 15 months.

I was honored to travel with the President on that trip. Not since President Kennedy's visit to Ireland in 1963 have the people of that island so warmly welcomed an American President. It was also the first time that an American President visited Northern Ireland.

On a sunny day in Dublin, a huge crowd turned out to hear the President's address in front of the Bank of Ireland at College Green where he was awarded the Freedom of the City. And later that day he addressed Ireland's Parliament, the Dail.

Among other things, the President spoke eloquently about the tragedy of the famine 150 years ago and the most bittersweet of blessings which came from it--the arrival in America of Irish immigrants who would help build our country. Today, 44 million Americans claim Irish descent. They are Protestants and Catholics. Many came during the famine and many came before. All want peace in Northern Ireland. As one of those 44 million Irish Americans, I am grateful for the leadership the President has shown in helping to bring peace to that island which means so much to so many of us.

I ask unanimous consent that the President's remarks in Dublin be printed in the Record following my remarks.

There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

Remarks by the President in Address to the People of Ireland, Bank of Ireland at College Green, Dublin, Ireland, December 1, 1995

Thank you very much. (Applause.) First, let me say to all of you Dubliners and all Ireland, Hillary and I have loved our trip to your wonderful country. (Applause.) To the Taoiseach and Mrs. Bruton; Lord Mayor Loftus and Lady Loftus; City Manager Frank Feely; to all the aldermen who conferred this great honor on me.

To the Americans in the audience, welcome to all of you. (Applause.) Are there any Irish in the audience? (Applause.) I want to say also how pleased I am to be here with a number of Irish American members of the United States Congress; and the Irish American Director of the Peace Corps, Mark Gearan; the Irish American Secretary of Education Richard Riley; and the Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, who wishes today he were Irish American. Thank you all for being here. (Applause.)

I was on this college green once before. Yes. In 1968, when I was almost as young as some of the young students over there. (Applause.) Lord Mayor, I never dreamed I would be back here on this college green in this capacity, but I am delighted to be here. And I thank you. (Applause.)

I am told that in earlier times the honor I have just received, being awarded the Freedom of the City, meant you no longer had to pay tolls to the Vikings. I'm going to try that on the Internal Revenue Service when I get home. I hope it will work. (Laughter.) Whether it does or not, I am proud to say that I am now a free man of Dublin. (Applause.)

To look out into this wonderful sea of Irish faces on this beautiful Irish day I feel like a real `Dub' today--is that what I'm supposed to say? (Applause.) Not only that, I know we have a handy football team. (Laughter.)

Let me say that, as a lot of you know, because of events developing in Bosnia and the prospect of peace there, I had to cut short my trip. But there are a few signs out there I want to respond to. I will return to Ballybunion for my golf game. (Laughter and applause.)

I am also pleased to announce that President Robinson has accepted my invitation to come to the United States next June to continue our friendship. (Applause.)

There's another special Irish-American I want to mention today and that is our distinguished Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith--(applause)--who came here with her brother, President Kennedy, 32 years ago and who has worked very hard also for the cause of peace in Northern Ireland. (Applause.)

Years ago, Americans learned about Dublin from the stories of James Joyce and Sean O'Casey. Today, America and the world still learn about Dublin and Ireland through the words of Sebastian Barry, Paula Meehin, Roddy Doyle--(applause)--through the films of Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan; through the voices of Mary Black and the Delores Keane--(applause)--and yes, through the Cranberries and U-2. (Applause.) I hear all about how America's global--the world's global culture is becoming more American, but I believe if you want to grasp the global culture you need to come to Ireland. (Applause.)

All of you know that I have family ties here. My mother was a Cassidy, and how I wish she were alive to be here with me today. She would have loved the small towns and she would have loved Dublin. Most of all, she would have loved the fact that in Ireland, you have nearly 300 racing days a year. (Laughter.) She loved the horses.

I understand that there are some Cassidys out in the audience today. And if they are, I want to say in my best Arkansas accent, cead mile failte--(applause)--beatha saol agus slainte. (Applause.)

One hundred and fifty years ago, the crops of this gorgeous island turned black in the ground and one-fourth of your people either starved from the hunger or were lost to emigration. That famine was the greatest tragedy in Irish history. But out of that horrible curse came the most bittersweet of blessings--the arrival in my country of millions of new Americans who built the United States and climbed to the top of its best works. For every person here in Ireland today, 12 more in the United States have proud roots in Irish soil. (Applause.)

Perhaps the memory of the famine explains in part the extraordinary generosity of the Irish people, not just to needy neighbors in the local parish, but to strangers all around the globe. You do not forget those who still go hungry in the world today; who yearn simply to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. In places as far away as the Holy Land, Asia and Africa, the Irish are helping people to build a future of hope.

Your sons and daughters in the Gardai and the defense forces take part in some of the most demanding missions of goodwill, keeping the peace, helping people in war-torn lands turn from conflict to cooperation. Whenever the troubled places of the earth call out for help, from Haiti to Lebanon, the Irish are always among the very first to answer the call.

Your commitment to peace helps conquer foes that threaten us all. And on behalf of the people of the United States, I say to the people of Ireland: We thank you for that from the bottom of our hearts. (Applause.)

Ireland is helping beat back the forces of hatred and destruction all around the world--the spread of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, ethnic hatreds, religious fanaticism, the international drug trade. Ireland is helping to beat back these forces that wage war against all humanity. You are an inspiration to people around the world. You have made peace heroic. Nowhere are the people of Ireland more important in the cause of peace today than right here at home.

Tuesday night, before I left the United States to come here, I received the happy word that the Taoiseach and Prime Minister Major had opened a gateway to a just and lasting peace, a peace that will lift the lives of your neighbors in Northern Ireland and their neighbors in the towns and counties that share the Northern border. That was the greatest welcome anyone could have asked for. I applaud the Taoiseach for his courage, but I know that the courage and the heart of the Irish people made it possible. And I thank you for what you did. (Applause.)

Waging peace is risky. It takes courage and strength that is a hard road. It is easier, as I said yesterday, to stay with the old grudges and the old habits. But the right thing to do is to reach for a new future of peace--not because peace is a document on paper, or even a handshake among leaders, but because it changes people's lives in fundamental and good ways.

Yesterday in Northern Ireland I saw that for myself. I saw it on the floor of the Mackie Plant in Belfast, with Catholics and Protestants working side by side to build a better future for their families. I heard it in the voices of the two extraordinary children you may have seen on your television, one a Catholic girl, the other a Protestant boy, who introduced me to the people of Belfast with their hands joined, telling the world of their hopes for the future, a future without bullets or bombs, in which the only barriers they face are the limits to their dreams.

As I look out on this sea of people today I tell you that the thing that moved me most in that extraordinary day in Northern Ireland yesterday was that the young people, Catholic and Protestant alike, made it clear to me not only with their words, but by the expressions on their faces that they want peace and decency among all people. (Applause.)

I know well that the immigration from your country to the shores of mine helped to make America great. But I want more than anything for the young people of Ireland, wherever they live on this island, to be able to grow up and live out their dreams close to their roots in peace and honor and freedom and equality. (Applause.)

I could not say it better than your Nobel Prize-winning poet, Seamus Heany, has said: `We are living in a moment where hope and history rhyme.' In Dublin, if there is peace in Northern Ireland, it is your victory, too. And I ask all of you to think about the next steps we must take.

Stand with the Taoiseach as he takes risks for peace. Realize how difficult it is for them, having been in their patterns of opposition for so long to the north of you. And realize that those of you who have more emotional and physical space must reach out and help them to take those next hard steps. It is worth doing.

And to you, this vast, wonderful throng of people here, and all of the people of Ireland, I say: America will be with you as you walk the road of peace. We know from our own experience that making peace among people of different cultures is the work of a lifetime. It is a constant challenge to find strength amid diversity, to learn to respect differences instead of run from them. Every one of us must fight the struggle within our own spirit. We have to decide whether we will define our lives primarily based on who we are, or who we are not; based on what we are for, or what we are against. There are always things to be against in life, and we have to stand against the bad things we should stand against.

But the most important thing is that we have more in common with people who appear on the surface to be different from us than most of us know. And we have more to gain by reaching out in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood to those people than we can possibly know. That is the challenge the young people of this generation face. (Applause.)

When President Kennedy came here a generation ago and spoke in this city he said that he sincerely believed--and I quote--`that your future is as promising as your past is proud; that your destiny lies not as a peaceful island in a sea of troubles, but as a maker and shaper of world peace.'

A generation later Ireland has claimed that destiny. Yours is a more peaceful land in a world that is ever more peaceful in significant measure because of the efforts of the citizens of Ireland. For touching the hearts and minds of peace-loving people in every corner of the world; for the risk you must now continue to take for peace; for inspiring the nations of the world by your example; and for giving so much to make America great, America says, thank you.

Thank you, Ireland, and God bless you all. (Applause.)

Remarks by the President in Address to the Irish Parliament, Dail Chamber at Leinster House, Dublin, Ireland, December 1, 1995

Mr. Speaker Comhaile, you appear to be someone who can be trusted with the budget. (Laughter and applause.) Such are the vagaries of faith which confront us all. (Laughter and applause.)

To the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, members of the Dail and the Seanad, head of the Senate: I'm honored to be joined here, as all of you know, by my wife, members of our Cabinet and members of the United States Congress of both parties--the congressional congregation chaired by Congressman Walsh--they are up there. They got an enormous laugh out of the comments of the Comhaile. (Laughter.) For different reasons they were laughing. (Laughter.)

I thank you for the honor of inviting me here, and I am especially pleased to be here at this moment in your history--before the elected representatives of a strong, confident, democratic Ireland; a nation today playing a greater role in world affairs than ever before.

We live in a time of immense hope and immense possibility; a time captured, I believe, in the wonderful lines of your poet, Seamus Heaney, when he talked of the `longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.' That is the time in which we live.

It's the world's good fortune that Ireland has become a force for fulfilling that hope and redeeming the possibilities of mankind--a force for good far beyond your numbers. And we are all the better for it.

Today I have traveled from the North where I have seen the difference Ireland's leadership has made for peace there. At the lighting of Belfast's Christmas tree for tens of thousands of people there, in the faces of two communities divided by bitter history, we saw the radiance of optimism born, especially among the young of both communities. In the voices of the Shankill and the Falls, there was a harmony of new hope which we saw. I saw that the people want peace--and they will have it.

George Bernard Shaw, with his wonderful Irish love of irony, said, `Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.' Well, today, I thank Prime Minister Bruton and former Prime Minister Reynolds and Deputy Prime Minister Spring and Britain's Prime Minister Major, and others, but especially these, for their unfailing dedication to the arduous task of peace.

From the Downing Street Declaration to the historic cease-fire that began 15 months ago, to Tuesday's announcement of the twin-track initiative which will open a dialogue in which all voices can be heard and all viewpoints can be represented, they have taken great risks without hesitation. They've chosen a harder road than the comfortable path of pleasant, present pieties. But what they have done is right. And the children and grandchildren of this generation of Irish will reap the rewards.

Today, I renew America's pledge. Your road is our road. We want to walk it together. We will continue our support--political, financial and moral--to those who take risks for peace. I am proud that our administration was the first to support in the executive budget sent to the Congress the International Fund for Ireland--because we believe that those on both sides of the border who have been denied so much for so long should see that their risks are rewarded with the tangible benefits of peace.

In another context a long time ago, Mr. Yeats
reminded us that too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. We must not let the hearts of the young people who yearn for peace turn to stone.

I want to thank you here, not only for the support you've given your leaders in working for peace in Northern Ireland, but for the extraordinary work you have done to wage peace over war all around the world. Almost 1,500 years ago, Ireland stood as a lone beacon of civilization to a continent shrouded in darkness.

It has been said, probably without overstatement, that the Irish, in that dark period, saved civilization. Certainly you saved the records of our civilization--our shared ideas, are shared ideals, our priceless recordings of them.

Now, in our time, when so many nations seek to overcome conflict and barbarism, the light still shines out of Ireland. Since 1958, almost 40 years now, there has never been a single, solitary day that Irish troops did not stand watch for peace on a distant shore. In Lebanon, in Cyprus, in Somalia, in so many other places, more than 41,000 Irish military and police personnel have served over the years as peacekeepers--an immense contribution for a nation whose Armed Forces today number fewer than 13,000.

I know that during your presidency of the European Union next year, Ireland will help to lead the effort to build security for a stable, strong and free Europe. For all--all you have done, and for your steadfast devotion to peace, I salute the people of Ireland.

Our Nation also has a vital stake in a Europe that is stable, strong and free--something which is now in reach for the first time since nation-states appeared on the continent of Europe so many centuries ago. But we know such a Europe can never be built as long as conflict tears at the heart of the continent in Bosnia. The fire there threatens the emerging democracies of the region and our allies nearby. And it also breaks our heart and violates our conscience.

That is why, now that the parties have committed themselves to peace, we in the United States are determined to help them find the way back from savagery to civility, to end the atrocities and heal the wounds of that terrible war. That is why we are preparing our forces to participate there, not in fighting a war, but in securing a peace rooted in the agreement they have freely made.

Standing here, thinking about the devastation in Bosnia, the long columns of hopeless refugees streaming from their homes, it is impossible not to recall the ravages that were visited on your wonderful country 150 years ago--not by war, of course, but by natural disaster when the crops rotted black in the ground.

Today, still, the Great Famine is seared in the memory of the Irish nation and all caring peoples. The memory of a million dead, nearly two million more forced into exile-- these memories will remain forever vivid to all of us whose heritage is rooted here.

But as an American, I must say as I did just a few moments ago in Dublin downtown, that in that tragedy came the supreme gift of the Irish to the United States. The men, women and children who braved the coffin ships when Galway and Mayo emptied; when Kerry and Cork took flight, brought a life and a spirit that has enormously enriched the life of our country.

The regimental banner brought by President Kennedy that hangs in this house reminds us of the nearly 200,000 Irishmen who took up arms in our Civil War. Many of them barely were off the ships when they joined the Union forces. They fought and died at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Theirs was only the first of countless contributions to our Nation from those who fled the famine. But that contribution enabled us to remain a nation and to be here with you today in partnership for peace for your nation and for the peoples who live on this island.

The Irish have been building America ever since-- our cities, our industry, our culture, our public life. I am proud that the delegation that has accompanied me here today includes the latest generation of Irish American leaders in the United States, men and women who remain devoted to increasing our strength and safeguarding our liberty.

In the last century, it was often said that the Irish who fled the great hunger were searching for casleain na n-or--castles of gold. I cannot say that they found those castles of gold in the United States, but I can tell you this-- they built a lot of castles of gold for the United States in the prosperity and freedom of our Nation. We are grateful for what they did and for the deep ties to Ireland that they gave us in their sons and daughters.

Now we seek to repay that in some small way--by being a partner with you for peace. We seek somehow to communicate to every single person who lives here that we want for all of your children the right to grow up in an Ireland where this entire island gives every man and woman the right to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities and gives people the right to live in equality and freedom and dignity.

That is the tide of history. We must make sure that the tide runs strong here, for no people deserve the brightest future more than the Irish.

God bless you and thank you. (Applause.)

END