Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

As President McAleese takes her leave of Áras an Uachtaráin today, she can be happy that as she says goodbye to her home of the last 14 years, she travels out into a country so much better for her being its President. Over the years we became accustomed to her warmth, her compassion, her love of life and her approachability.

The facility and fluency she achieved in humanising and personalising the role of the President never, on a single occasion, took from the dignity and solemnity of the office. Even this alone made her Presidency one to watch. It is easy to forget that she reared her family while in office. Her shy young children Emma, Sarah and Justin, became teenagers, students, graduates. Her husband, Senator Martin McAleese, was strength itself to the President, not only as a loving and supportive husband, but as her engineering partner in the complex business of building bridges. What they achieved together, with and for communities, was as remarkable as it was brave. It leaves relations between the peoples of this island on a stronger, warmer and more confident footing.

Their work gave us a great gift of insight - the ability to stand in the other's shoes. It gives us common territory of the heart and mind, on which we can strike out on new journeys and imagine new possibilities. There is so much to say about our exemplary, departing President. She was there to comfort and reassure in times of crisis. After the Omagh bombing, she gave calm and eloquent voice to the shock and revulsion of all the peoples of our island. On 9/11, her words brought the solace and security of home to our Irish family, grief stricken, across the Atlantic. In every parish across our country, people felt touched and uplifted by the presence of their President. She had the same beaming smile for everyone.

The first among equals, she made equality, real equality, the hallmark of everything she undertook, every community centre she opened and every hostel she visited. Today, her last official function was to open a St. Vincent de Paul refurbished building for homeless men in Dublin. It is no surprise that President McAleese chose to spend her last official moments with the marginalised, the excluded, and those who work with them. It is a testament to the compassion and generosity of her Presidency.

For me, two of the more recent iconic images come to mind. Two women, head to toe in black, standing silently beside each other: our President and Queen Elizabeth at the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines. On this, the eve of Armistice Day, it is a good time to say that President McAleese went a long way to fulfilling the dream of the nationalist and proud soldier, Tom Kettle, who died in the Great War. As he wrote:

This tragedy of Europe may be, and must be, the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed - the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of lreland with Great Britain.

The second image is that of the Queen of England coming here and the closing of that circle of history.

At her inauguration in 1997, President McAleese quoted Apollinaire:

Come to the edge.

They said: We are afraid.

Come to the edge, you said.

They came. You pushed them and they flew.

I wish Mary, Martin and the family every luck and happiness in the long years ahead. Even if she had never been President, it would still be an honour to call her my friend.

Go raibh maith agat, a Uachtaráin dhílis, agus go n-eirí go geal leat as seo amach le do chlann agus d'fhear céile, Mairtín.

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