 
Will you please be upstanding
for our wonderful President of Ireland
Michael D. Higgins
and our wonderful first lady, Sabina
 
Well, there she is. She hasn't changed at all.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh
 
I'm so pleased to be here again.
As we go through the day, 
Sabina and I will do a number of events,
including one at the Áras, celebrating International Women's Day,
which we've been doing every year.
 
When I got the message from the temporarily incapacitated herself, ...

I have often been here, and this is where, I think, you can encounter what is the full texture of Irish life,
in its very, very best sense.
I think I've said elsewhere this morning,
that it is very important to realise that rights don't fall from the sky,
and we must never forget those who fought for rights
and also took all the risks, so that we can, almost without thinking, enjoy the rights that we have today.
And the women who fought for women's rights
didn't just fight for the rights of women only, because they fought for the rights of women and men.
But, very particularly, it was women who carried the burden of the struggle.
We must never be afraid, and we must encourage young people when they're speaking about rights,
that rights have no borders. And rights have no borders either in space or time.
And wherever people are deprived of their rights it doesn't just affect them,
which it does most acutely,
but it affects us all, and we are all lessened by a world that doesn't recognise rights.
Many of the women were involved
in the suffrage movement, there was a huge range, as Rita has said.
Some had come with experience from the 1913 Lockout,
some had been coming from 1916,
some were aware of the campaigns that were going on in the country,
all of them had one thing - which was a great lesson in itself, to this day,
and that is that while they might differ - some of them were more militant than others, some were pacifists, and so on -
some of them would later be very active in the anti-conscription league,
but they all had something very important:
they were able to speak to each other, 
respecting difference,
and that was terribly important, even when they differed,
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington had differences with the Gore-Booths,
but they all respected the discourse, being able to say, we can agree on what it is that we want,
the road that we're travelling together.
I think that it is a great, great privilege to be here
I think it is important, and why I said remembering not just countess Markievicz
but remember the other sister [Eva Gore-Booth], the sister who was engaged and who was very, very important
We should remember all women, when you think of all women,
I wrote once, in a line in one of my poems, the women for whom electricity came too late to straighten their backs,
rural women, urban women, women in all circumstances,
and that's why we're celebrating today, yes, the Irish women's franchise league, the Irish women suffrage federation,
the women workers' union, daoine ha hEireann, 
cumann na mban,
all of them. We're really celebrating
all of the experiences of women, today and in the past, here and all over the world.
And I finish by saying this: 
the great problems that we've identified,
such as climate change and sustainable development,
and when you look at the great burden - where are the consequences of climate change fallling,
it is in the continent of Africa, it is women travelling ever farther to gather fuel
it is women who are taking the risk as they do that,
and then you turn it around the other way,
and you look at what is happening in agriculture,
and what is happening to the best promises in different countries in Africa, and again it is women
who are to the front of that.
So women, in fact, in what they're doing, women are experiencing, if you like, the agony of the world,
but they are also the most
 transformative agents we have
for getting to a better place, and that is something to be remembered this day.
I said that we've had great examples in this area, 
again and again,
from such as Madge Fagan, we've also had great examples from Rita Fagan,
and we've also had great examples from each and every one of you, who participate during the day today.
And aris míle buíochas.
It's a real privilege to be here today. I've always enjoyed, and will enjoy coming here,
and thank you so much for having 
Sabina and I start your day.
